Multifunctional RGO/Ti3C2Tx MXene fabrics for electrochemical energy storage, electromagnetic interference shielding, electrothermal and human motion detection

With the rapid development of information technology and electronics, the traditional textiles hardly fulfill the requirements of wearable electronics. Multifunctional textile-based electronics integrated with energy storage, joule heating, electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding and sensing has become a favorable solution. Herein, a scalable spray-coating and dip-coating strategy is developed to fabricate the multifunctional reduced graphene oxide/Ti3C2Tx MXenes decorated cotton fabrics. The RGO/MXene modified fabrics show hydrophilic surface, high electrical conductivity, good flexibility and breathability. In addition, the RGO/MXene modified fabrics demonstrate excellent electrochemical performance, and the assembled all-solid-state supercapacitors show one of the highest specific capacitances of 383.3 F g−1 (258 mF cm−2). More importantly, the RGO/MXene fabrics show distinctive negative resistance variation and high sensitivity when they are applied as the strain sensors to detect the human motions including the bending of finger, elbow, knee and swallowing process. Moreover, the RGO/MXene fabrics show good joule heating and EMI shielding performance. This work may shed light on cost-effective but high-performance textile-based strain sensors, EMI shielding and electrochemical energy storage devices, and paves the way for the development of multifunctional wearable electronics.