Air-dried high-strength black MXene aerogel for spatiotemporal infrared information management

Great efforts have been made to control the energy interaction between objects and environments by the effective regulation of infrared (IR) radiation of materials with low-thermal-conductivity aerogels or electrical-/thermal- triggered functional films, which would bring heavy burden associated with system complexity for objects in dynamical environments. Herein, a bone-like lightweight and high-strength black Ti₃C₂T_x aerogel is developed, which demonstrates an easily mechanically-regulated IR radiation management capacity for high-temperature objects with backgrounds of dramatic temperatures fluctuations. An air-drying strategy allows inner wrinkled and porous structure of this lightweight (60 mg cm^-3) Ti₃C₂T_X aerogel with the record 159.9 MPa g^-1 cm³ specific compressive modulus and 1.6 MPa g^-1 cm³ specific compressive stress. IR emissivity of Ti₃C₂T_X aerogel can be modulated widely from 0.17 to 0.98 by surface microstructure construction for IR letters or numbers information transmission, although which appear to be indistinguishable black to naked eyes.