Hierarchical, seamless, edge-rich nanocarbon hybrid foams for highly efficient electromagnetic-interference shielding

Abstract Lightweight, flexible, ultrahigh-performance electromagnetic-interference (EMI) shielding materials are urgently required in the areas of aircraft/aerospace, portable and wearable electronics. Herein, 1D carbon nanotubes (CNT) and carbon nanofibers (CNF) with 2D edge-rich graphene (ERG) are used to form a lightweight, flexible CNT-ERG-CNF hybrid foam. This foam was fabricated through a self-sacrificial templating chemical vapor deposition process, where nanocarbons bond through covalent bonding, forming a hierarchical 3D hybridized carbon nanostructure. Multistage conductive networks and heterogeneous interfaces were constructed using edge-rich nanocarbons to increase the induced currents and interfacial polarization which makes great contributions to achieve high absorption electromagnetic shielding effectiveness (SEA). The CNT-ERG-CNF hybrid foam exhibits EMI shielding effectiveness (SE) exceeding 55.4 dB in the X-band while the specific SE (SSE, SE divided by mass density) achieves 9200 dB cm3 g-1, which surpasses that of nearly all other carbon-based composite materials. Furthermore, the structural stability and durability of the flexible CNT-ERG-CNF hybrid foams is examined by measuring EMI SE after 10000 times cyclic bending. Remarkably, this work not only provides a new idea for preparing hierarchical carbon materials for a wide range of applications, but presents some fundamental insights for achieving higher absorption losses in EMI shielding materials.