title: Highly conductive and flexible polymer composites with improved mechanical and electromagnetic interference shielding performances.
abstract: New flexible and conductive materials (FCMs) comprising a quartz fiber cloth (QFC) reinforced multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs)-carbon aerogel (QMCA) and poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) have been successfully prepared. The QMCA-PDMS composite with a very low loading of MWCNTs (∼1.6 wt%) demonstrates enhanced performance in tensile strength (129.6 MPa), modulus (3.41 GPa) and electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding efficiency (SE) (∼16 dB in X-band (8.2-12.4 GHz) region). Compared to the QC (where MWCNTs were simply deposited on the QFCs without forming aerogel networks) based PDMS composite, a ∼120%, 330% and 178% increase of tensile strength, modulus, and EMI SE was obtained, respectively. Moreover, the EMI SE of the QMCA-PDMS composite can further reach 20 dB (a SE level needed for commercial applications) with only 2 wt% MWCNTs. Furthermore, the conductivity of the QMCA-PDMS laminate can reach 1.67 S cm(-1) even with very low MWCNTs (1.6 wt%), which still remains constant even after 5000 times bending and exhibits an increase of ∼170% than that of MWCNT-carbon aerogel (MCA)-PDMS at 20% strain. Such intriguing performances are mainly attributed to their unique networks in QMCA-PDMS composites. In addition, these features can also protect electronics against harm from external forces and EMI, giving the brand-new FCMs huge potential in next-generation devices, like E-skin, robot joints and so on.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory for Ultrafine Materials of Ministry of Education, School of Materials Science and Engineering, East China University of Science and Technology, 130 Meilong Road, Shanghai 200237, China. zlingzi@ecust.edu.cn czli@ecust.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Mengting
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Ling
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Shasha
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Duan
authors.forename: Shilong
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Jing
authors.forename: Hao
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.forename: Meifang
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Luo
authors.forename: Chunzhong
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Li