Alignment of graphene sheets in wax composites for electromagnetic interference shielding improvement

Rapid advancements in carbon-based fillers have enabled a new and more promising platform in the development of electromagnetic attenuation composites. Alignment of fillers in composites with specific structures and morphologies has been widely pursued to achieve high performance based on taking advantage of unique filler characteristics. In this work, few-layer graphene (FLG), obtained from direct exfoliation of graphite, was fabricated into paraffin wax to prepare FLG/wax composites and investigate their electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding performance. The as-exfoliated FLG/wax samples have shown much improved EMI performance compared to the commercial graphite/wax ones. For further improvement of EMI shielding performance, split-press-merge approaches were applied to align the FLG fillers to achieve anisotropic characteristics in the plane perpendicular to the pressing direction. Much enhanced EMI shielding performance coupled with an improvement in absorption and reflection was observed in the post-alignment FLG/wax composites. An average interparticle distance model associated with improved electrically conducting interconnection and enlarged effective reflection regions with respect to enhanced reflection efficiency were discussed. The results suggest a platform and promising opportunities for preparing high-performance EMI shielding composites.