Materials with good flexibility and high conductivity that can provide electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding with minimal thickness are highly desirable, especially if they can be easily processed into films. Two-dimensional metal carbides and nitrides, known as MXenes, combine metallic conductivity and hydrophilic surfaces. Here, we demonstrate the potential of several MXenes and their polymer composites for EMI shielding. A 45-micrometer-thick Ti3C2Tx film exhibited EMI shielding effectiveness of 92 decibels (>50 decibels for a 2.5-micrometer film), which is the highest among synthetic materials of comparable thickness produced to date. This performance originates from the excellent electrical conductivity of Ti3C2Tx films (4600 Siemens per centimeter) and multiple internal reflections from Ti3C2Tx flakes in free-standing films. The mechanical flexibility and easy coating capability offered by MXenes and their composites enable them to shield surfaces of any shape while providing high EMI shielding efficiency.

Electromagnetic interference shielding with 2D transition metal carbides (MXenes)

With the growing popularity of electrical communication equipment, high-performance electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding materials are widely used to deal with radiation pollution. However, the large thickness and poor mechanical properties of many EMI shielding materials usually limit their applications. In this study, ultrathin and highly flexible Ti3C2Tx (d-Ti3C2Tx, MXene)/cellulose nanofiber (CNF) composite paper with a nacre-like lamellar structure is fabricated via a vacuum-filtration-induced self-assembly process. By the interaction between one-dimensional (1D) CNFs and two-dimensional (2D) d-Ti3C2Tx MXene, the binary strengthening and toughening of the nacre-like d-Ti3C2Tx/CNF composite paper has been successfully achieved, leading to high tensile strength (up to 135.4 MPa) and fracture strain (up to 16.7%), as well as excellent folding endurance (up to 14 260 times). Moreover, the d-Ti3C2Tx/CNF composite paper exhibits high electrical conductivity (up to 739.4 S m–1) and excellent specifi...

Binary Strengthening and Toughening of MXene/Cellulose Nanofiber Composite Paper with Nacre-Inspired Structure and Superior Electromagnetic Interference Shielding Properties

Electromagnetic energy radiation is becoming a "health-killer" of living bodies, especially around industrial transformer substation and electricity pylon. Harvesting, converting, and storing waste energy for recycling are considered the ideal ways to control electromagnetic radiation. However, heat-generation and temperature-rising with performance degradation remain big problems. Herein, graphene-silica xerogel is dissected hierarchically from functions to "genes," thermally driven relaxation and charge transport, experimentally and theoretically, demonstrating a competitive synergy on energy conversion. A generic approach of "material genes sequencing" is proposed, tactfully transforming the negative effects of heat energy to superiority for switching self-powered and self-circulated electromagnetic devices, beneficial for waste energy harvesting, conversion, and storage. Graphene networks with "well-sequencing genes" (w = Pc /Pp > 0.2) can serve as nanogenerators, thermally promoting electromagnetic wave absorption by 250%, with broadened bandwidth covering the whole investigated frequency. This finding of nonionic energy conversion opens up an unexpected horizon for converting, storing, and reusing waste electromagnetic energy, providing the most promising way for governing electromagnetic pollution with self-powered and self-circulated electromagnetic devices.

Thermally Driven Transport and Relaxation Switching Self-Powered Electromagnetic Energy Conversion.

Electromagnetic (EM) absorbing and shielding composites with tunable absorbing behaviors based on Ti3C2 MXenes are fabricated via HF etching and annealing treatment. Localized sandwich structure without sacrificing the original layered morphology is realized, which is responsible for the enhancement of EM absorbing capability in the X-band. The composite with 50 wt % annealed MXenes exhibits a minimum reflection loss of −48.4 dB at 11.6 GHz, because of the formation of TiO2 nanocrystals and amorphous carbon. Moreover, superior shielding effectiveness with high absorption effectiveness is achieved. The total and absorbing shielding effectiveness of Ti3C2 MXenes in a wax matrix with a thickness of only 1 mm reach values of 76.1 and 67.3 dB, while those of annealed Ti3C2 MXenes/wax composites are 32 and 24.2 dB, respectively. Considering the promising performance of Ti3C2 MXenes with the modified surface, this work is expected to open the door for the expanded applications of MXenes family in EM absorbing an...

Ti3C2 MXenes with Modified Surface for High-Performance Electromagnetic Absorption and Shielding in the X-Band

Lightweight, ultrathin, and flexible electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding materials are needed to protect electronic circuits and portable telecommunication devices and to eliminate cross-talk between devices and device components. Here, we show that a two-dimensional (2D) transition metal carbonitride, Ti3CNTx MXene, with a moderate electrical conductivity, provides a higher shielding effectiveness compared with more conductive Ti3C2Tx or metal foils of the same thickness. This exceptional shielding performance of Ti3CNTx was achieved by thermal annealing and is attributed to an anomalously high absorption of electromagnetic waves in its layered, metamaterial-like structure. These results provide guidance for designing advanced EMI shielding materials but also highlight the need for exploring fundamental mechanisms behind interaction of electromagnetic waves with 2D materials.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/369/6502/446.full.pdf

Anomalous absorption of electromagnetic waves by 2D transition metal carbonitride Ti3CNTx (MXene)

EMI shielding effectiveness of carbon based nanostructured polymeric materials: A comparative study

Hybrids of conductive polymer nanocomposites

The past few decades have seen ongoing development of continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) systems that are noninvasive and accurately measure blood glucose levels. The conventional finger-prick method, though accurate, is not feasible for use multiple times a day, as it is painful and test strips are expensive. Although minimally invasive and noninvasive CGM systems have been introduced into the market, they are expensive and require finger-prick calibrations. As the diabetes trend is high in low- and middle-income countries, a cost-effective and easy-to-use noninvasive glucose monitoring device is the need of the hour. This review paper briefly discusses the noninvasive glucose measuring technologies and their related research work. The technologies discussed are optical, transdermal, and enzymatic. The paper focuses on Near Infrared (NIR) technology and NIR Photoplethysmography (PPG) for blood glucose prediction. Feature extraction from PPG signals and glucose prediction with machine learning methods are discussed. The review concludes with key points and insights for future development of PPG NIR-based blood glucose monitoring systems.

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Noninvasive Blood Glucose Monitoring Systems Using Near-Infrared Technology—A Review

Recent trends in research and the market show high demand for frequent monitoring of glucose to estimate the blood sugar level non-invasively which can replace the conventional finger-prick glucometer for daily use. This paper presents a high precision near-infrared Photoplethysmography (PPG) based noninvasive glucose monitoring System on Chip (SoC). The proposed system implements a fully differential Analog Frontend (AFE) with nonlinear medium Gaussian support-vector-regression (NMG-SVR) for glucose estimation. The AFE design incorporates chopping which enables the reduction of the integrated input-referred current noise to 9.4pArms thus achieving a dynamic range of 115dB. The glucose prediction processor (GPP) removes noise from the PPG signal, extracts ten unique features, and estimates the blood glucose level using a trained customized NMG-SVR model that minimizes the hardware cost by 25%. The extracted features are carefully designed and implemented to ensure inter-feature dependency, which helps to reduce the overall area by more than 40%. Moreover, GPP is implemented using power and clock gating techniques to minimize both static and dynamic power consumption. The proposed SoC is realized with $0.18~\mu \text{m}$ CMOS technology and occupies an area of 6 mm2. It dissipates a power of $186~\mu \text{W}$ and achieves a mean absolute relative difference (mARD) of 6.9% verified on 200 subjects.

A 186μW Photoplethysmography-Based Noninvasive Glucose Sensing SoC

A noninvasive glucose monitoring system-on-chip (SoC) based on near-infrared (NIR) Photoplethysmography (PPG) is proposed in this paper. The proposed SoC includes a PPG-readout circuit, and a glucose estimation processor (GPP). Six different temporal and spectral features are extracted from the PPG signal after motion artifact and baseline removal from the PPG signal. The GPP utilizes Ensembled Boosted Trees to predict blood glucose levels. The SoC is implemented in 180um CMOS and consumes 208μW with an area of 4.5mm2. It achieves a mean absolute relative difference (mARD) of 5.83% (mARD) verified on 200 subjects. This improves (accuracy/power) figure of merit (FoM) by 5.5% compared to the state-of-the-artwork.

Walaa H. Saadeh

Papers

EMI shielding effectiveness of carbon based nanostructured polymeric materials: A comparative study

Hybrids of conductive polymer nanocomposites

Noninvasive Blood Glucose Monitoring Systems Using Near-Infrared Technology—A Review

A 186μW Photoplethysmography-Based Noninvasive Glucose Sensing SoC

A 208μW PPG-based Glucose Monitoring SoC using Ensembled Boosted Trees