Fabrication on the annealed Ti3C2Tx MXene/Epoxy nanocomposites for electromagnetic interference shielding application

Few-layered Ti3C2Tx MXene was fabricated by ionic intercalation and sonication-assisted method, followed by thermal reduction at medium-low temperature. Then annealed Ti3C2Tx/epoxy electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding nanocomposites were obtained by solution casting method. XRD, SEM, AFM and TEM indicated the successful preparation of few-layered Ti3C2Tx. FTIR, XPS and XRD showed that thermal reduction removed partial polar groups on the surface of Ti3C2Tx with no by-product. For a fixed Ti3C2Tx loading, compared with Ti3C2Tx/epoxy EMI shielding nanocomposites, the annealed Ti3C2Tx/epoxy EMI shielding nanocomposites exhibited relatively higher electrical conductivity and excellent EMI shielding effectiveness (SE). When the mass fraction of annealed Ti3C2Tx was 15 wt%, the annealed Ti3C2Tx/epoxy EMI shielding nanocomposites presented the optimal electrical conductivity of 105 S/m and EMI SE of 41 dB, 176% and 37% higher than that of 15 wt% Ti3C2Tx/epoxy EMI shielding nanocomposites. Furthermore, the 5 wt% annealed Ti3C2Tx/epoxy EMI shielding nanocomposites exhibited the optimal Young's modulus of 4.32 GPa and hardness of 0.29 GPa, respectively.