Scalable ultrastrong MXene films with superior osteogenesis.

Abstract

Titanium carbide MXene flakes have promising applications in aerospace, flexible electronic devices and biomedicine owing to their superior mechanical properties¹ and electrical conductivity² and good photothermal conversion³, biocompatibility⁴ and osteoinductivity⁵. It is highly desired yet very challenging to assemble MXene flakes into macroscopic high-performance materials in a scalable manner. Here we demonstrate a scalable strategy to fabricate high-performance MXene films by roll-to-roll-assisted blade coating (RBC) integrated with sequential bridging, providing good photothermal conversion and osteogenesis efficiency under near-infrared irradiation. MXene flakes were first bridged with silk sericin by hydrogen bonding and then assembled into macroscopic films using a continuous RBC process, followed by ionic bridging to freeze their aligned structure. The resultant large-scale MXene films with strong interlayer interactions are highly aligned and densified, exhibiting high tensile strength (755 MPa), toughness (17.4 MJ m^-3) and electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding capacity (78,000 dB cm² g^-1), as well as good ambient stability, photothermal conversion and bone regeneration performance. The proposed strategy not only paves a feasible way for realizing the practical applications of MXene in the fields of flexible EMI shielding materials and bone tissue engineering but also provides an avenue for the high-performance and scalable assembly of other two-dimensional flakes.