Advanced functional Kevlar composite with excellent mechanical properties for thermal management and intelligent safeguarding

Abstract Fabric-based personal thermal management devices propel the development of flexible heaters which play important roles in medicinal therapy and protecting humans from cold environments. However, due to the poor mechanical properties, most heaters are easy to be damaged under dynamic loading forces, and also difficult to provide necessary anti-impact protection for human beings. Therefore, it is significant to develop multifunctional fabric heaters with high mechanical properties. Herein, a novel MXene/SSG/Kevlar-based multifunctional textile composite (MS-Kevlar) with sensitive monitoring, thermal management and impact protection is developed by assembling Kevlar fiber, shear stiffening gel (SSG) and two-dimensional MXene. This MS-Kevlar has high sensitive monitoring properties to various stimuli from slight physiological activities to high-speed bullet impact. MS-Kevlar with excellent conductivity shows high thermal management properties which can reach 80.9 °C at 6 V working voltage. Besides thermal protection property, the multifunctional MS-Kevlar can absorb 55.4% force under low-speed impact and still retain the electro-thermal performance after impacted. More importantly, the ballistic limit velocity of MS-Kevlar increases more than 142.1% compared with that of neat Kevlar which could provide safeguarding for humans. Finally, a smart curtain with thermal and anti-impact performance was designed and the based wireless impact alarm system is beneficial for people to assess and avoid dangers.