Electromagnetic interference shielding effectiveness of a flexible carbon fiber felt containing in situ grown hafnium carbide nanowires and nanobelts

Abstract Hafnium carbide nanowires (HfC nw ) and a small amount of hafnium carbide nanobelts (HfC nb ) were incorporated in a flexible carbon fiber felt by catalysis-assisted chemical vapor deposition to fabricate an electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding carbon-based material with excellent electromagnetic wave absorption properties. The EMI shielding effectiveness (SE) of the flexible carbon fiber felt containing in situ grown HfC nw and HfC nb was investigated in X band (8.2 GHz–12.4 GHz). The result shows that more than 99% of the incident beam was shielded when the thickness of the sample is 1.5 mm. Moreover, all the SE A /SE T values in this work are more than 0.8, even up to 0.94 at 11 GHz, meaning SE T mainly results from SE A . The excellent electromagnetic wave absorption properties of the sample are due to the conductivity loss triggered by moving electrons and the polarization loss caused by considerable interfaces.