Lightweight and flexible Ag-wrapped polyimide aerogel fabrics for electromagnetic interference shielding

Lightweight, flexible and highly effective electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding fabrics are urgent demanded to protect the human body from harmful electromagnetic radiation. However, the design of fiber microstructures for achieving high-performance EMI shielding still remains significant challenges. Herein, novel EMI shielding fabrics have been designed based on polydopamine-assisted Ag deposition on polyimide (Ag@PI) aerogel fabrics. The Ag@PI aerogel fabric integrates highly conductive Ag and leverages the three-dimensional porous structure of aerogel to facilitate multiple reflections and interface polarization of electromagnetic waves. The Ag@PI aerogel fabrics exhibit ultra-high electromagnetic interference shielding performance of 89.4 dB owing to their unique porous structure, while the Ag@PI fabric without porous structure is only 65.1 dB. The normalized specific shielding effectiveness (SSE) of the Ag@PI aerogel fabrics is up to 812.7 dB cm3 g−1, significantly exceeding that of other EMI shielding textiles reported so far.