Preparation and High-Sensitivity Thermochromic Performance of MXene-Enhanced Cholesteric Liquid Crystal Microcapsule...

Area of Science:

• Materials Science
• Nanotechnology
• Textile Engineering

Background:

• Cholesteric liquid crystals (CLCs) exhibit temperature-dependent color changes but suffer reduced sensitivity after microencapsulation.
• Developing robust thermochromic textiles with preserved CLC sensitivity is crucial for smart wearable applications.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop MXene-reinforced thermochromic textiles that mitigate the loss of color-change sensitivity in microencapsulated CLCs.
• To investigate the fabrication and performance of these novel composite materials.

Main Methods:

• Fabrication of monolayer/few-layer MXene nanosheets using an etching-intercalation-dispersion method.
• Synthesis of cholesteric liquid crystal microcapsules (CLCMs) via solvent evaporation.
• Layer-by-layer (LbL) self-assembly of poly(diallyldimethylammonium chloride) (PDAC)/MXene composite coatings on polydopamine (PDA)-pretreated cotton fabrics.

Main Results:

• Characterization confirmed MXene nanosheets with an average thickness of 1.54 nm and uniformly spherical CLCMs.
• The resulting textiles demonstrated reversible red-green-blue color transitions within a narrow temperature range (26.5–29.5 °C).
• The MXene-reinforced textiles exhibited color-change sensitivity comparable to pristine CLCs and excellent hydrophobicity.

Conclusions:

• This research successfully overcomes the sensitivity attenuation issue in conventional liquid crystal microcapsule textiles.
• The developed MXene-reinforced thermochromic textiles offer a novel strategy for advanced smart wearable color-changing materials.