Fabrication of conductive elastomer of MXene/natural rubber composite for medical device application

Nowadays, conductive materials have attracted great attention in variety of application such as, electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding, sensors, energy, and biomedical devices. MXene is a novel family of two-dimensional (2D) transition metal carbides or nitrides as conductive material which has remarkable properties. In this research, MXene was successfully synthesized via chemical etching method. Further, it was also employed to generate single-layer MXene or exfoliated MXene (E-MXene) by immersing in acetone mixture (60%) combined with sonication. The result showed XRD pattern of MXene reveals the characteristic peak at 2θ ≈ 5.4o and E-MXene shift peak of 2θ ≈ 5.8o corresponding to their intelayer spacing. The produced conductive elastomers were based on pre-vulcanized natural rubber (PNR) and two types of conductive fillers were investigated, MXene and E-MXene. Fabrication of composite film was prepared by a facile a latex blending method and use glutaraldehyde (GA) as a crosslink agent. The effect of both MXene and E-MXene concentrations on the film formation and films’ properties, i.e electrical conductivity, mechanical properties with strainability, scanning electron microscope-energy dispersive X-ray (SEM-EDX), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), and fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) was investigated. With proper E-MXene nanosheets concentration (16.67%, namely E-MXene/PNR-3) with GA, the electrical conductivity with strainability and mechanical properties of the composite film were significantly improved. The as-prepared composite film has potential for applying as conductive elastomer in biomedical devices application.