The tremendous advances in communication technology and the explosion of electronic products led to an intensification of electromagnetic pollution, yet the efficient development of lightweight, high-strength fiber composite foams with excellent electromagnetic shielding properties was still a great challenge. Herein, this study, inspired by the sandwich structure, proposes a green foaming method with supercritical N2 to prepare a multilayered structure of carbon fiber reinforced polypropylene (PP/CF) foams, with a dense cellular structure in the core layer and a solid layer in the surface layer. The incorporation of CF improves the crystallization and rheological behavior of PP/CF, which guarantees a fine, dense and uniform cellular structure. This inner fine cellular structure and the solid layer on the surface contribute to the excellent mechanical properties. PP/30 %CF foam with a 1 mm mold opening distance displays an enhancement of 189.9 % in tensile strength and 196.3 % in flexural strength compared to pure PP. This also indicates more lightweight, high-strength and high-rigidity microcellular parts was obtained with less raw materials. Moreover, the formation of CF conductive network and internal foam structure contribute to excellent electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding performance. The PP/CF composite foams maintain a level of EMI shielding performance greater than 30 dB despite the higher mold opening distance. Specifically, the PP/30 %CF foams at opening distance of 5 mm was enhanced to 58.3 dB·cm3/g with an improvement of 76.7 %. This implies that lightweight microcellular parts with both excellent strength and EMI shielding properties can be prepared, which enables PP/CF foams to possess a wide range of applications in various fields.
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