Acrylonitrile-Butadiene-Styrene-Based Composites Derived from 'Fish-Net'-Inspired Pickering Emulsion for High-Performance Electromagnetic Interference Shielding and Thermal Management

Abstract

Conductive polymer composites (CPCs) are highly desirable to address the electromagnetic radiation and heat accumulation issue associated with highly integrated electronics. However, it remains challenging to achieve high electromagnetic interference shielding effectiveness (EMI SE) while maintaining desirable thermal management performance in CPCs. Herein, we report an effective and adaptive strategy to construct a conductive pathway of graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs) and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) within the acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) matrix using Pickering emulsion as a designer platform. The non-covalently driven “fish-net” assembly of regenerated cellulose (RC) and GNP/CNT at the emulsion interface results in a continuous three-dimensional (3D) conductive network within the ABS matrix after solvent diffusion and hot-compressing. As expected, the resultant composites exhibit high electrical conductivity of 261.1 S/m and excellent thermal conductivity of 4.17 W/mK at 27.8 wt% GNPs and 3 wt% CNTs loadings. Owing to the absorption-dominant shielding mechanism, a maximum EMI SE of 73.5 dB can be achieved. The versatility of this strategy for constructing EMI shielding composites has been demonstrated using various polymer matrix. Therefore, the Pickering emulsion-based strategy exhibits great potential in fabricating high-performance dually-conductive EMI shielding materials for the applications in artificial intelligence, aerospace, military and so on.