Electromagnetic shielding efficiency in Ka-band: carbon foam versus epoxy/carbon nanotube composites

The wide application of microwaves stimulates searching for new materials with high electrical conductivity and electromagnetic (EM) interference shielding effectiveness (SE). We conducted a comparative study of EM SE in K-a-band demonstrated by ultra-light microstructural porous carbon solids (carbon foams) of different bulk densities, 0.042 to 0.150 g/cm(3), and conventional flexible epoxy resin filled with carbon nanotubes (CNTs) in small concentrations, 1.5 wt.%. Microwave probing of carbon foams showed that the transmission through a 2 mm-thick layer strongly decreases with decreasing the pore size up to the level of 0.6%, due to a rise of reflectance ability. At the same time, 1 mm thick epoxy/CNT composites showed EM attenuation on the level of only 66% to 37%. Calculating the high-frequency axial CNTs' polarizability on the basis of the idea of using CNT as transmission lines, we devised a strategy to improve the EM SE of CNT-based composites: because of the high EM screening of inner shells of multi-walled CNTs in the GHz range, it is effective to use either single-walled CNT or multi-walled CNTs with a relatively small number of walls (up to 15, i.e., those taking part in the EM interaction, if the CNT length is 20 mu m). c 2012 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). [DOI: 10.1117/1.JNP.6.061715]