MXene/PDMS composite foam with regulatable cell structures for improved EMI shielding performance

The construction of conductive network and the design of material structure are the key points of polymer-based shielding materials. Herein, we reported a MXene/PDMS composite foam material with adjustable cell structure and high efficiency electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding. Few-layered MXene is used as a conductive filler to construct three-dimensional conductive networks by in situ chemical etching. Meanwhile, a series of polystyrene microspheres with different sizes were prepared by applying suspension polymerization method as templates to introduce different cell sizes and densities for PDMS-based materials. The density and EMI shielding performance of composites can be improved by adjusting the cell structure. Compared with the unfoamed MXene/PDMS composites, the composite foam in this work not only reduces the material density greatly but also improves the microwave absorption performance with smaller cell size. This method provides a simple and effective guide for changing material density and absorbing mechanism by introducing cell structure into polymer-based materials in the future.