From materials to components: 3D-printed architected honeycombs toward high-performance and tunable electromagnetic interference shielding

Abstract

With booming development of 5G communications and electronic devices, electromagnetic waves (EMWs) radiation pollution has aroused much concern on public, and great efforts are being made to develop the high-performance electromagnetic interference shielding (EMI SE) materials. However, inherent deficiencies of traditionally processing technology restrain the current materials to fabricate desirable architectures for SE applications. Herein, taking full advantages of 3D printing in free-construction, architected honeycombs featuring lightweight and high-efficient EMI SE are designed with polylactic acid (PLA) as matrix, and graphene nanosheets and carbon nanotubes hybrids (GNs/CNTs) as functional fillers . The optimal printed material shows a high electrical conductivity up to 110.8 S/m and outstanding EMI SE property of 53.5 dB, far exceeding the standard of commercially shielding materials (20 dB). More encouragingly, this work makes a deep insight into the intrinsic connection of porous structure of 3D-printed components on shielding mechanism, which reveals that as the pore size is far less than a certain proportion of incident wavelength (λ/5), the components exhibit a good reconcilability on the lightweight (0.4–1.0 g/cm 3 ) and high-performance EMI SE (35–45 dB). From fundamental materials to desirable components, this breakthrough lays a solid foundation for the free-construction of diversified architectures in EMI SE applications. • The strong conductive networks are constructed by the hybridization of graphene nanosheets and carbon nanotubes. • The hybrid networks endow the 3D-printed components with superior electromagnetic interference shielding (∼53.5 dB). • The diameter of porous structures should be less than the 1/5 of incident wavelength (λ) to shield electromagnetic waves. • The 3D-printed honeycombs exhibit a good reconcilability on lightweight and electromagnetic interference shielding.