On October 31, Nature published the latest progress made by the research group of Professor Cheng Qunfeng from the School of Chemistry, Beihang University, and the research group of Professor Deng Xuliang from the School of Stomatology, Peking University in the field of two-dimensional nanocomposites and their application in bone regeneration.
The research, titled “Scalable ultrastrong MXene films with superior osteogenesis,” proposed a new strategy to fabricate high-performance MXene films by roll-to-roll-assisted blade coating (RBC) integrated with sequential bridging, addressed the long-standing challenge of continuous preparation of high-performance two-dimensional nanocomposites, and provided insights into the new application of MXene films in bone regeneration.
Associate Professor Wan Sijie from the School of Chemistry, Beihang University, and Associate Researcher Chen Ying from the School of Stomatology, Peking University are co-first authors. Professor Cheng Qunfeng and Professor Deng Xuliang are the corresponding authors.
Titanium carbide MXene flakes have promising applications in aerospace, flexible electronic devices and biomedicine owing to their superior mechanical properties and electrical conductivity and good photothermal conversion, biocompatibility and osteoinductivity. It is highly desired yet very challenging to assemble MXene flakes into macroscopic high-performance materials in a scalable manner. In the article, the researchers demonstrate a scalable strategy to fabricate high-performance MXene films by roll-to-roll-assisted blade coating (RBC) integrated with sequential bridging, providing good photothermal conversion and osteogenesis efficiency under near-infrared irradiation. MXene flakes were first bridged with silk sericin by hydrogen bonding and then assembled into macroscopic films using a continuous RBC process, followed by ionic bridging to freeze their aligned structure.
The resultant large-scale MXene films with strong interlayer interactions are highly aligned and densified, exhibiting high tensile strength (755 MPa), toughness (17.4 MJ m−3) and electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding capacity (78,000 dB cm2 g−1), as well as good ambient stability, photothermal conversion and bone regeneration performance. The proposed strategy not only paves a feasible way for realizing the practical applications of MXene in the fields of flexible EMI shielding materials and bone tissue engineering but also provides an avenue for the high-performance and scalable assembly of other two-dimensional flakes.
This work was supported by the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars, the National Key Research and Development Program of China, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Beijing Nova Program, the National Postdoctoral Program for Innovative Talents, the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation, the Clinical Medicine Plus X-Young Scholars Project, Peking University, the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, Excellent Sino-Foreign Young Scientist Exchange Program of CAST, 111 Project, the Beijing Municipal Science & Technology Commission and the Beijing Research Ward Excellence Program, BRWEP.
The work also received great assistance from Associate Professor Zhou Ke at Soochow University for theoretical calculations, the beamline BL18B at Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility for nano-CT measurements, the Analysis and Testing Center of Beihang University for nano-CT characterization, the High-Performance Computing Platform at Beihang University, and the Physical and Chemical Analysis Center at Suzhou Institute for Advanced Research, University of Science and Technology of China.
Original article link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08067-8
Prof. Cheng Qunfeng’s group website: http://chengresearch.net/zh/home-cn/
(Source: School of Chemistry)
Written by: Lyu Xingyun
