Highly conductive and flexible polymer composites with improved mechanical and electromagnetic interference shielding performances

New flexible and conductive materials (FCMs) comprising a quartz fiber cloth (QFC) reinforced multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs)-carbon aerogel (QMCA) and poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) have been successfully prepared. The QMCA-PDMS composite with a very low loading of MWCNTs (similar to 1.6 wt%) demonstrates enhanced performance in tensile strength (129.6 MPa), modulus (3.41 GPa) and electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding efficiency (SE) (similar to 16 dB in X-band (8.2-12.4 GHz) region). Compared to the QC (where MWCNTs were simply deposited on the QFCs without forming aerogel networks) based PDMS composite, a similar to 120%, 330% and 178% increase of tensile strength, modulus, and EMI SE was obtained, respectively. Moreover, the EMI SE of the QMCA-PDMS composite can further reach 20 dB (a SE level needed for commercial applications) with only 2 wt% MWCNTs. Furthermore, the conductivity of the QMCA-PDMS laminate can reach 1.67 S cm(-1) even with very low MWCNTs (1.6 wt%), which still remains constant even after 5000 times bending and exhibits an increase of similar to 170% than that of MWCNT-carbon aerogel (MCA)-PDMS at 20% strain. Such intriguing performances are mainly attributed to their unique networks in QMCA-PDMS composites. In addition, these features can also protect electronics against harm from external forces and EMI, giving the brand-new FCMs huge potential in next-generation devices, like E-skin, robot joints and so on.