Washable Superhydrophobic Cotton Fabric with Photothermal Self-Healing Performance Based on Nanocrystal-MXene

作者：Anyang Duan, Frank Gu, Xiaodong Jiang, Jinmei Du, Dongyan Shao, Changhai Xu · 发表于：ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1021/acsami.4c21715 · 被引用次数：18 · 研究领域：MXene and MAX Phase Materials、Advanced Sensor and Energy Harvesting Materials、Polydiacetylene-based materials and applications

Superhydrophobic fabrics suffer from being commonly penetrated by moisture after laundering, seriously deteriorating their water repellency after air drying. Numerous researchers have successfully recovered superhydrophobicity by drying in fluid ovens; however, high energy consumption and equipment dependence limit practical applications. Herein, the superhydrophobic photothermal self-healing cotton fabric (SPS cotton fabric) was fabricated by depositing a composite layer of cellulose nanocrystal-MXene (C-MXene) and polyacrylate (PA) coatings on the cotton cloth. Superior photothermal conversion of the SPS cotton fabric performance enables its 10.5–56.8 °C greater temperature than that of the pure hydrophobic cotton fabric under different simulated solar light intensities. After washing, the SPS cotton fabric can spontaneously restore superhydrophobicity with ≈100% efficiency by 30 mW·cm –2 solar light irradiation; in contrast, the single superhydrophobic fabrics recover only ≈71.2%. Even after 10 washing cycles, the recovery efficiency of the SPS cotton fabric only decreases by 0.1%, exhibiting excellent laundering durability. The SPS cotton fabric can retain ultralong time antifrosting (2760 s) and antifreezing (4080 s) capacities due to sustainable water repellency. Remarkably, the excellent self-healing capability of the SPS cotton fabric is attributed to the fact that the coiled nonpolar alkane chains can be restored to a straight state by autothermal drive, confirmed th...