Lightweight, high electrical and thermal conducting carbon-rGO composites foam for superior electromagnetic interference shielding

Lightweight and high strength carbon-rGO composite foams were inventively fabricated by simple sacrificial template technique using reduced graphene oxide (rGO) and phenolic resin as a carbon source. The carbon-rGO composite foams were fabricated by two different routes. In one case, rGO was incorporated in phenolic resin and carbon foam developed by several heat treatments. In the other case, graphene oxide (GO) was decorated over carbon foam and converted into rGO decorated carbon foam by heat treatment. The EMI shielding of carbon-rGO composite foams was measured in the X-band frequency range (8.2-12.4 GHz) and mechanisms were systematically studied with respect to the rGO and porous structure. The EMI SE of carbon foams was increased from -23.2 to -50.7 dB by the decoration of 1.0 wt % rGO. The thermal conductivity achieves as high as 1.4 W/(m K) by incorporation of 4.0 wt % rGO in carbon foam. All the results indicated that this effort provided a novel, simple, low-cost concept for fabricating lightweight, high electrical and thermal conducting carbon-rGO composite foam for high-performance EMI shielding applications.