Homogeneous silver nanoparticles decorating 3D carbon nanotube sponges as flexible high-performance electromagnetic shielding composite materials

Nowadays flexible high-performance electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding materials are greatly demanded in military and daily purpose. To yield high shielding effectiveness (SE), the traditional metallic EMI materials always require a large mass of loading in a composite matrix, which is uneconomic and harmful to the mechanical property of the materials. Herein the homogeneous decoration of Ag nanoparticles on a light-weight and robust carbon nanotube sponge (CNTS) based 3D conductive scaffold is introduced. The flexible Ag/CNTS/PDMS composites exhibit an extremely high and tunable EMI shielding performance with improved mechanical strength and high conductivity. The maximum EMI SE is measured to be even greater than 90 dB in the X-band (8–12 GHz) with a low loading of Ag (3%, wt %) and CNTS (4%, wt %). In addition, the 3D inter-connected pore structure enables EM waves to reflect multiple times inside the Ag/CNTS hybrids which results in a strong absorption ability. The total EMI shielding property can be further conveniently controlled by tuning the Ag-deposition parameters as well as the thickness of the sample. The current approach successfully avoids the dispersion problem of the fillers and will be of great importance in development of high-performance EMI shielding materials.