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Phase change fibers with abilities to store/release thermal energy and responsiveness to multiple stimuli are of high interest for wearable thermal management textiles. However, it is still a challenge to prepare phase change fibers with superior comprehensive properties, especially proper thermal conductivity. Here, we report a cooperative in situ impregnation strategy to introduce graphene oxide (GO) and polyethylene glycol (PEG) together into the carbon nanotube (CNT) network during the expansion process and construct a 1D–2D multilevel skeleton, resulting in a CNT/GO/PEG composite phase change fiber. The presence of GO plays a more important role in increasing the interfacial contact and space volume, resulting in the characteristics of high loading (up to 96.8–98.4%), phase change enthalpy, and relatively lower thermal conductivity. Therefore, the CNT/GO/PEG phase change fiber demonstrates higher thermal efficiency during the exothermic process, showing good thermal management characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Phase change fibers with multifunctionalities are a promising material for thermal management applications, however, it is still challenging to simultaneously give the fiber high energy conversion and storage capacity. Here, a cooperative in situ impregnation strategy is reported, to introduce Au nanoparticles (NPs) and polyethylene glycol (PEG) together into carbon nanotube (CNT) network during the expansion process, resulting in a CNT/Au/PEG composite phase change fiber. The obtained composite fiber have the characteristics of high loading (up to 88.0–98.6%) and uniform distribution of Au NPs, and thus exhibits superior mechanical, electrical, and thermal properties. The presence of Au NPs plays more important role in not only improving the PEG crystallinity and phase change enthalpy, but also enhancing the photothermal conversion efficiency (up to 88.2%). There is also a new feature of precise regulation of the phase change temperatures, e.g., from 9.5 to 20.5 °C for the solidification temperature. More importantly, due to the strong confinement of PEG and Au NPs inside the CNT network, the composite fiber also shows excellent thermal stabilities, including the anti‐leakage behavior and cycling phase change ability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]