Lightweight and high-performance electromagnetic radiation shielding composites based on a surface coating of Cu@Ag nanoflakes on a leather matrix

Abstract

A leather matrix (LM) was used as a microwave-absorptive substrate to surface coat with Cu@Ag nanoflakes to prepare a lightweight, high-performance and wearable nanocomposite shielding material. The essence of this strategy is that the shielding capacity of the nanocomposite is dependent not only on the reflectivity of Cu@Ag nanoflakes to microwaves, but also on the absorption capacity of the LM to the incident microwaves via dielectric loss. In this way, an extremely low content of Cu@Ag nanoflakes is enough for LM-Cu@Ag to achieve superior high shielding ability (∼100 dB), thus showing lightweight high-performance shielding ability (specific shielding effectiveness up to 120 dB cm³ g⁻¹) in a board frequency range (10–3000 MHz, 8–12 GHz). Moreover, this nanocomposite shielding material is also able to be tailored into wearable clothing, demonstrating its practical wearability.