Highly Flexible Ti3C2Tx MXene/Waterborne Polyurethane Membranes for High-Efficiency Terahertz Modulation with Low Insertion Loss

Tangdong Feng; Yiwen Hu; Xue Chang; Wanxia Huang; Daoyuan Wang; Hongfu Zhu; Tianyu An; Wenping Li; Kun Meng; Xueguang Lu; Basanta Roul; Sujit Das; Hua Deng; Kirill I Zaytsev; Li-Guo Zhu; Qiwu Shi

doi:10.1021/acsami.2c21031

Highly Flexible Ti₃C₂T_x MXene/Waterborne Polyurethane Membranes for High-Efficiency Terahertz Modulation with Low Insertion Loss

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2023 Feb 8;15(5):7592-7601. doi: 10.1021/acsami.2c21031. Epub 2023 Jan 27.

Authors

Tangdong Feng¹, Yiwen Hu¹, Xue Chang^{1

2}, Wanxia Huang¹, Daoyuan Wang¹, Hongfu Zhu^{1

2}, Tianyu An¹, Wenping Li³, Kun Meng³, Xueguang Lu¹, Basanta Roul^{4

5}, Sujit Das⁴, Hua Deng⁶, Kirill I Zaytsev⁷, Li-Guo Zhu², Qiwu Shi¹

Affiliations

¹ College of Materials Science and Engineering, Sichuan University, Chengdu610065, Sichuan, China.
² Institute of Fluid Physics, China Academy of Engineering Physics, Mianyang621900, Sichuan, China.
³ Qingdao QUNDA Terahertz Technology Co. Ltd, Qingdao266104, Shandong, China.
⁴ Materials Research Centre, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore560012, India.
⁵ Central Research Laboratory, Bharat Electronics Limited, Bangalore560013, India.
⁶ College of Polymer Science and Engineering, State Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials Engineering, Sichuan University, Chengdu610065, Sichuan, China.
⁷ Prokhorov General Physics Institute of the Russia Academy of Science, Vavilova Street 39, Moscow119991, Russia.

PMID: 36705674
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.2c21031

Abstract

The dynamic control of terahertz (THz) wave transmission on flexible functional materials is a fundamental building block for wearable electronics and sensors in the THz range. However, achieving high-efficiency THz modulation and low insertion loss is a great challenge while maintaining the excellent flexibility and stretchability of the materials. Herein, we report a Ti₃C₂T_x MXene/waterborne polyurethane (WPU) membrane prepared by a vacuum-assisted filtration method, which exhibits excellent THz modulation properties across stretching. The hydrophilic Ti₃C₂T_x MXene and WPU enable the uniform 3D distribution of Ti₃C₂T_x MXene in the WPU matrix. Particularly, the stretchability with the maximum strain of the membranes can reach 200%, accompanied by dynamic tuning of THz transmittance for more than 90% and an insertion loss as low as -4.87 dB. The giant THz modulation continuously decreases with MXene content per unit area, accompanied by a lower density of the MXene interface and diminished THz absorption during stretching. Such a design opens a pathway for achieving flexible THz modulators with a high modulation depth and low insertion loss, which would be used for THz flexible and wearable devices.

Keywords: MXene; flexible; modulation; strain; terahertz.