A PDMS pocket based transparent polydopamine-decorated polypyrrole nanofibril–polyacrylamide hydrogel for EMI shielding applications

Abstract

With the rise in electromagnetic pollution, there has been a lot of interest in EMI shielding materials, which must have high transparency and flexibility for use in visualisation windows, aerospace equipment, and wearable technology. The development of conductive hydrogel-based materials has opened up new possibilities for EMI shielding and flexible functional devices. The main challenge of an efficient EMI shielding hydrogel based material is maintaining a balance between high optical transparency, conductivity, and stability in a harsh environment. Here we prepared a polydimethyl siloxane (PDMS) pocket based polypyrrole (PPy) doped with polydopamine (PDA) in a polyacrylamide (PAM) polymer network. In the PPy–PDA–PAM hydrogel, the in situ generated nanofibrils form a nanomesh type structure, which provided a complete conductive route. The PDMS-pocket based hydrogel (PDMS-pocket PPy–PDA–PAM-0.8, 3 days) did not show a significant change (∼57.50 dB to ∼54.77 dB) in EMI shielding performance even after one month of storage at room temperature, whereas the pristine hydrogel (PPy–PDA–PAM-0.8, 3 days) showed a drastic change in shielding performance from ∼65.29 dB to ∼12.69 dB. Thus, these findings provide an innovative strategy to fabricate a transparent, flexible, stretchable, self-adhesive and good environmentally secure EMI shielding material for futuristic development of smart electronics.