High Performance Electromagnetic Interference Shielding from Lightweight-Flexible Polymer Composite Fiber Structures

This study focuses on the development and characterization of fiber-based polymer composite structures with the goal of developing high performance, flexible, lightweight, and cost-effective materials for electromagnetic interference shielding and piezoelectricity. Polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) was used as the base fiber mat while polyaniline (PANI), polypyrrole (PPY), polyindole (PIN), polydiacetylene (PDA) and Zn2GeO4 (ZGO) were incorporated via solution mixing and in-situ polymerization. The PVDF fine fiber systems were produced using the Forcespinning® method. Morphology, structure, thermal stability, electrical properties, EMI shielding effectiveness and piezoelectric performance of the fiber mats were analyzed. The composite system containing 1.25 wt. % of ZGO-PVDF displayed the highest piezoelectric response of 172V. This fine fiber composite system has promising potential applications for energy harvesting and the powering of wearable and portable electronics. The PVDF/PANI-PDA multilayered composite consisting 5 layers showed the highest obtained value more than 40dB EMI SE in the frequency range at 500 MHz