A facile preparation of flexible and porous reduced graphene oxide woven fabric/polydimethylsiloxane composites for EMI shielding

Abstract

Materials with high electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding performances, excellent conductivity and flexibility, along with low density, have a great potential to be applied in next generation of flexible electronic devices. In the current study, one of such materials, reduced graphene oxide woven fabrics (rGWF)/poly(dimethyl siloxane) (PDMS) composites are fabricated through a facile template-directed reduction method followed by dip coating. The fabricated composite possesses a highly ordered and hierarchical porous structure, containing 3D interconnected graphene networks. The unique porous structure containing high-quality graphene architecture makes the composite exceptional EMI shielding properties. The composite containing four layers of rGWF delivers a remarkable total shielding effectiveness (SET) of 46 dB and a specific SET of 295 dB·cm3 g−1. Apart from this property, the composite also exhibits excellent durability and is capable of retaining over 94% and 98% of the original SET after 100 stretching-releasing and bending-releasing cycles, respectively. These excellent properties in EMI shielding performance, durability, and reliability give rGWF/PDMS composite a great potential to be used as emerging flexible EMI shielding materials.