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Iron oxide/CNT-based artificial nacre for electromagnetic interference shielding

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Abstract

Biological structural materials, despite consisting of limited kinds of compounds, display multifunctionalities due to their complex hierarchical architectures. While some biomimetic strategies have been applied in artificial materials to enhance their mechanical stability, the simultaneous optimization of other functions along with the mechanical properties via biomimetic designs has not been thoroughly investigated. Herein, iron oxide/carbon nanotube (CNT)-based artificial nacre with both improved mechanical and electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding performance is fabricated via the mineralization of Fe3O4 onto a CNT-incorporated matrix. The micro- and nano-structures of the artificial nacre are similar to those of natural nacre, which in turn improves its mechanical properties. The alternating electromagnetic wave-reflective CNT layers and the wave-absorptive iron oxide layers can improve the multiple reflections of the waves on the surfaces of the reflection layers, which then allows sufficient interactions between the waves and the absorption layers. Consequently, compared with the reflection-dependent EMI-shielding of the non-structured material, the artificial nacre exhibits strong absorption-dependent shielding behavior even with a very low content of wave-absorptive phase. Owing to the high mechanical stability, the shielding effectiveness of the artificial nacre that deeply cut by a blade is still maintained at approximately 70%–96% depending on the incident wave frequency. The present work provides a new way for designing structural materials with concurrently enhanced mechanical and functional properties, and a path to combine structural design and intrinsic properties of specific materials via a biomimetic strategy.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Nos. XDB 0470303 and XDB 0450402), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Nos. 2018YFE0202201 and 2021YFA0715700), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 22293044, U1932213, and 22305240), and the New Cornerstone Investigator Program. Y.-F. M. acknowledges the Major Basic Research Project of Anhui Province (No. 2023z04020009) and the Double First-Class University Construction Fund from USTC (No. YD2060002037). This work was partially carried out at the USTC Center for Micro and Nanoscale Research and Fabrication.

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  1. Cheng-Xin Yu and Yu-Feng Meng contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Physical Science and Information Technology, Anhui University, Hefei, 230601, China

    Cheng-Xin Yu & Zhi-Kun Wu

  2. Key Laboratory of Materials Physics, Anhui Key Laboratory of Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology, CAS Center for Excellence in Nanoscience, Institute of Solid State Physics, HFIPS, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei, 230031, China

    Cheng-Xin Yu & Zhi-Kun Wu

  3. Department of Chemistry, New Cornerstone Science Laboratory, Institute of Biomimetic Materials & Chemistry, Anhui Engineering Laboratory of Biomimetic Materials, Division of Nanomaterials & Chemistry, Hefei National Research Center for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, China

    Yu-Feng Meng, Bo Yang, Jun Pang, Xiang-Sen Meng, Zi-Ye Zhao, Qing-Yue Wang, Li-Bo Mao & Shu-Hong Yu

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  1. Cheng-Xin Yu
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  2. Yu-Feng Meng
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Correspondence to Li-Bo Mao, Zhi-Kun Wu or Shu-Hong Yu.

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Yu, CX., Meng, YF., Yang, B. et al. Iron oxide/CNT-based artificial nacre for electromagnetic interference shielding. Nano Res. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-024-6567-7

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