Scalable Production of Tailor-Designed MXene-Hydrogel Core-Shell Fibers via Dual Stress-Guided Alignment during Thermal Drawing.

Lee, Youngbin; Yoon, Yeo Hoon; Lee, Gang San; Nam, Kum Seok; Hassan, Tufail; Kim, Dong-Yeong; Jo, Kyunghyun; Hong, Ji-Won et al. · ACS Nano · 2026

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

Large-scale production of two-dimensional MXene-based functional fibers, while preserving their outstanding material properties, remains challenging. Here, we present highly aligned Ti<sub>3</sub>C<sub>2</sub>T<sub><i>x</i></sub> MXene fibers integrated into tens of meters-long fibers via in situ stress-induced alignments during thermal drawing. In the proposed liquid injection-assisted thermal drawing, MXene flakes in aqueous dispersion are continuously injected into hollow channels of fibers and subsequently aligned by interfacial shear stress at the MXene-polymer interface. Osmotic pressure resulting from water absorption into the hydrogel cladding further enhances layered MXene alignment via self-planarization, yielding highly aligned MXene-hydrogel core-shell fibers. Beyond general applications for electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding, our tailor-designed MXene fiber are utilized in multifunctional fiber-based devices, including EMI self-protective electronics and neural probe, leveraging EMI shielding effectiveness and electrical conductivity of the highly aligned MXene structure. This scalable approach to embedding the versatile MXene fiber-based system expands the application scope of MXenes in precise electronics, smart textiles, and biomedical engineering.