Electronic textiles offer exciting opportunities for an emerging class of electronic technology featuring intimate interaction with the human body. Among various functional components, a stretchable conductive textile represents a key building material to support the development of sensors, interconnects, and electrical contacts. In this study, a conductive textile is synthesized by bottom-up coassembly of silver nanowires and TPU microfibers. The conformal coverage of AgNW network over individual TPU microfibers gives rise to coherent deformations to mitigate the actual strain for enhanced stretchability and durability. The as-prepared conductive microtextile exhibits a series of desirable properties including excellent conductivity (>5000 S cm–1), exceptional stretchability (∼600% strain), soft mechanical properties, breathability, and washability. The practical implementation is demonstrated by fabricating an integrated epidermal sensing sleeve for multichannel EMG signal recordings, which supports real-time hand gesture recognitions powered by machine learning algorithm as a smart human–machine interface. The conductive textile reported in this study is well suited for garment integrated electronics with potential applications in health monitoring, robotic prosthetics, and competitive sports.

Stretchable electronics has emerged as a new class of electronic technology to expand the applications of conventional electronics built on rigid wafers. Among various systems, liquid-state devices utilize electronically active liquids to achieve excellent stretchability and durability. The widespread adaption to such attractive form of device is hindered by the lack of robust fabrication approach to precisely and efficiently assemble liquid-state materials into functional systems. In this study, an additive manufacturing platform for digital fabrication of three-dimensional elastomeric structures is reported. The shear-thinning ink is formulated to enable omnidirectional printing process. Various elastic features with complex architectures are generated without using sacrificial materials, which consist of overhanging parts, suspended structures, and embedded channels. Harnessing the unique printability allows facile creation of elastomeric sensors with strain-and pressure-sensing capabilities by simply filling the embedded microchannels with liquid metal. A smart glove to capture hand gestures is also demonstrated as a fully integrated electronic system with liquid-state components. The liquid-state stretchable electronics developed here may find potential applications in biomedical instruments, wearable devices, and soft robotics.

The solubility and the physicochemical properties (density and refractive index) in the liquid–solid metastable system (KCl−CaCl2−H2O) at (288.15 and 308.15) K were determined using the isothermal evaporation method. Based on the experimental data, the metastable phase diagrams and the diagrams of physicochemical properties vs composition in the system at (288.15 and 308.15) K were plotted. In the metastable phase diagrams of the ternary system at (288.15 and 308.15) K, there are in all one invariant point, two univariant curves, and two crystallization zones, corresponding to potassium chloride, antarcticite (CaCl2·6H2O) at 288.15 K, and potassium chloride, and calcium chloride tetrahydrate (CaCl2·4H2O), at 308.15 K. This system at both temperatures belongs to a simple eutectic type, and neither double salts nor solid solution were found. Based on the extended Harvie−Weare (HW) models and temperature-dependent equations at (288.15 and 308.15) K, respectively, the values of the Pitzer parameters β(0), β(1),and C φ for KCl and CaCl2, the mixed ion-interaction parameters θK,Ca and ΨK,Ca,Cl, the Debye–Hückel parameter A φ, and the standard chemical potentials of the minerals in the ternary system were obtained by fitting. Using the temperature-dependent equations and the standard chemical potentials of the minerals respectively, the predictive solubilities for the ternary system at both temperatures are presented. A comparison between the calculated and experimental results at each temperature shows that the predicted solubilities obtained with the extended HW model agree well with experimental data.

AbstractThe design of sulfur hosts with polar, sulfurphilic, and conductive network is critical to lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries whose potential applications are greatly limited by the lithium polysulfide shuttle effect. Mxenes, possessing layered-stacked structures and high electrical conductivities, have a great potential in sulfur hosts. Herein, sulfur nanoparticles uniformly decorated on titanium carbide Mxene (S@Ti3C2Tx Mxene) are synthesized via a hydrothermal method and then utilized as a cathode for lithium-sulfur batteries. This unique architecture could accommodate sulfur nanoparticles expansion during cycling, suppress the shuttling of lithium polysulfide, and enhance electronical conductivity. Consequently, the S@Mxene with a high areal sulfur loading (∼4.0 mg cm−2) exhibits a high capacity (1477.2 mAh g−1) and a low capacity loss per cycle of 0.18% after 100 cycles at 0.2 C. This work may shed lights on the development of high performance sulfur-based cathode materials for Li-S batteries.