Novel flexible polyurethane/MXene composites with sensitive solar thermal energy storage behavior

A Multifunctional Flexible Composite Film with Excellent Multi‐Source Driven Thermal Management, Electromagnetic Interference Shielding, and Fire Safety Performance, Inspired by a “Brick–Mortar” Sandwich Structure

“…Preparation of PM Film: First, a 0.5 mg mL −1 MXene dispersion was prepared according to the previous report. [26] PVA solution was then diluted into 1 mg mL −1 , and 0, 0.25, and 0.75 mL PVA solutions were mixed with 50, 49.5, and 48.5 mL MXene solution, respectively. The PM mixed solution was obtained following uniform ultrasonic dispersion.…”

“…In order to overcome the poor mechanical properties and stability of MXene, [25] highly flexible PVA was introduced into the MXene, [26] and the influence of changing PVA content on its structure and performance was explored (as shown in Figure S2, Supporting Information). As we expected, the microstructure of PMP films will possess a morphology similar to a "brickmortar" sandwich structure, with PCC, MXene, and PVA equivalent to the brick, sand, and cement in the construction of "brick-mortar" buildings (Figure 2a).…”

Flexible engineering of advanced phase change materials

“…Typical fabrication methods of flexible composite PCMs are preparing composites composed of pristine PCMs and flexible supporting materials, or grafting PCMs onto the polymer matrix by atom transfer radical polymerization or Diels-Alder reaction ( Cao et al., 2019 ; Shao et al., 2021b ). Since their inception in 2015, cellulose, carbon nanotubes, graphene, MXene, boron nitride, expanded graphite, and foam-based flexible composite PCMs have attracted extensive interests from researchers and engineers because of their high energy storage density, excellent mechanical flexibility, and advanced multifunctional applications ( Gong et al., 2021 ; Liu et al., 2021b ; Qian et al., 2019 ). A timeline outlining major milestones towards the development of flexible composite PCMs is depicted in Figure 2 .…”

“…In addition to the direct use of flexible supporting materials with strong mechanical property, chemical cross-linking is another strategy used to fabricate flexible composite PCMs. Gong et al. (2021) fabricated flexible polyurethane/MXene/PEG SSPCMs with improved solar-thermal conversion efficiency by a polyurethane cross-linking reaction between-NCO derived from HDIT and-OH derived from the MXene and PEG ( Lu et al., 2019b ).…”

“…However, an insightful understanding of flexible engineering of advanced PCMs is still insufficient. From the perspective of material science, herein, we systematically outline a comprehensive review of flexible PCMs based on different dimensional flexible additives, including 1D flexible additives, such as cellulose( Wei et al., 2019 ) and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) ( Wang et al., 2021a ); 2D flexible additives, such as graphene and their derivatives( Li et al., 2018 ), boron nitride (BN) ( Wang et al., 2020a ) ( Yang et al., 2018 )and MXene( Gong et al., 2021 ); and 3D flexible additives, such as EG( Wu et al., 2020c ), foam( Chang et al., 2020 ) and other 3D flexible materials 157 ( Figure 1 ). Moreover, we highlight fabrication techniques, flexibility evaluation strategies, advanced applications, current developments and further perspectives for flexible composite PCMs.…”