Advancing wearable nature-skin-derived materials encompassing fireproofing, intelligent early fire-detection, and health-management functionalities

The incidence of global fires has been steadily increasing, driven by factors such as climate conditions, geographical features, and human activities. To address this challenge, next-generation wearable firefighting fabrics are developed to provide essential fireproofing properties while ensuring wearer comfort, enabling real-time healthcare monitoring, and facilitating early fire-detection for enhanced safety and survival in fire incidents. Herein, a versatile smart nature-skin-derived wearable firefighting fabric (MA-skin) with robustly-integrated functionalities of fireproofing origins, healthcare monitoring, and rapid early-fire-alarming was nano-engineered through straightforward interfacial interactions of the functional building-blocks of MXene and ammonium polyphosphate (APP) and basal skin collagen-fibers. The resulting MA-skin demonstrates exceptional comfort, lightweight properties, biodegradability, and mechanical strength, with measured tensile strength of 9.4 MPa. Importantly, MA-skin shows gratifying flame retardant properties, ultra-fast fire detection (∼1 s), and prolonged alarm duration (>180 s). expectedly, promising to provide effectively desired rapid fire-alarming. Furthermore, MA-skin could subtly convert motion signals into electrical-signal output stably and uninterruptedly as a precise resistive strain-sensor for real-time healthcare monitoring. The integration of MA-skin into firefighting suits enables continuous monitoring of firefighter movement and health status. This study introduces innovative approaches in the development of firefighting fabrics, encompassing fireproofing, intelligent fire detection, and health management functionalities.