Simultaneously enhancing plasticity and load-bearing capacity by ionic crosslink for strong and conductive wet-spun graphene fibers

Plastic processing allows re-aligning molecules to improve the mechanical and electrical properties of wet-spun fibers, such as polyacrylonitrile fibers and graphene fibers (GFs). Specifically, the plasticity of graphene assembly is achieved by weakening the interlayer interaction via intercalating plasticizers. However, the plastic deformation is far lower than traditional wet-spun synthetic fibers, limiting the alignment of graphene sheets and resulting in inferior mechanical/electrical properties of GFs. Here, we demonstrate that strengthening interlayer crosslinks paradoxically improves both plasticity and load-bearing capacity in plasticized graphene oxide fibers (GOFs), achieving 17-fold greater deformability than nascent GOFs. This enhanced plasticity enables defect minimization and crystalline optimization through continuous stretching, yielding GFs with exceptional mechanical strength (tensile strength of 3.81 GPa and Young’s modulus of 509.5 GPa) and high electrical conductivity (3.23 × 10³ S cm⁻¹). The woven textiles using GFs have outstanding electromagnetic interference shielding performance.