Facile fabrication of MXene/cellulose fiber composite film with homogeneous and aligned structure via wet co-milling for enhancing electromagnetic interference shielding performance

MXene/cellulose nanofiber (MXene/CNF) composites have demonstrated promising performance in various areas. Here, we propose a one-pot wet co-milling strategy to produce homogeneous delaminated-MXene nanosheets/micro-fibrillated cellulose fibers slurry from multilayer-MXene particles/raw cellulose fibrils mixture on a large scale. The vacuum-filtrated MXene/CNF composite films can be fabricated from the well-dispersed slurry with a homogeneous and aligned structure which is convincingly demonstrated through laser scanning confocal microscopy (LSCM) and small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS). Owning to the well-refined structure, the mechanical properties, conductivity, and electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding performance of MXene/CNF composite films exhibit significant enhancement with 13882.8%, 3725.5%, and 63.5%, respectively. More importantly, the excellent EMI shielding performance of MXene/CNF composite films reaches up to 36.51 dB at a thickness of 20 μm. This wet co-milling strategy demonstrates potential in the facile manufacture of high-performance MXene-based composite materials for flexible EMI shielding materials.