Recent advances in the structural design of absorption-dominated MXene-based flexible electromagnetic shielding materials

Two-dimensional MXenes are promising building blocks for flexible electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding, but their metallic-like conductivity often causes impedance mismatch and reflection-dominated shielding, generating secondary electromagnetic pollution. Achieving absorption-dominated shielding therefore requires structural design that couples composition, architecture, and service reliability. Here, based on ∼180 representative studies published mainly from 2023 to 2026, we propose a three-tier processing–structure–property–reliability framework for MXene-based flexible EMI shielding materials. At the micro scale, MXene-based functional units incorporating graphene, CNTs, magnetic, metallic, ceramic, and other nanofillers are classified by their roles in impedance matching, interfacial polarization, conductive loss, and magnetic–dielectric coupling. At the macro scale, these units are mapped onto elastomers, engineering plastics, gels, nanofibres, and functional polymers, while gradient, porous, layered, Janus, and biomimetic architectures are compared in terms of flexibility, environmental tolerance, multifunctional integration, and absorption efficiency. At the service scale, dispersion instability, interfacial debonding, and oxidative degradation are identified as key failure modes, and corresponding mitigation strategies are summarized. Finally, future priorities are discussed, including tunable shielding, impedance-matching theory, deformation-aware co-design, AI-driven inverse design, and scalable manufacturing. This review aims to provide a cross-scale design roadmap for translating MXene-based flexible EMI shielding materials from laboratory demonstrations to reliable engineering applications.