EMI shielding and thermal conductivity of a high porosity reticular titanium foam

A highly porous titanium foam with open cells was made by the process of impregnating polymer foam in slurry and then sintering, which displayed a three-dimensional reticular structure with interconnected pores. For this reticular titanium foam, the electromagnetic shielding performance was investigated in the frequency range of 03-3000 MHz (covering that of radio waves). The experimental results indicated the porous samples displayed an evident effectiveness of electromagnetic shielding, especially a good performance at low frequencies. The shielding effectiveness presented an overall tendency of decrease with the increase of the frequency, and the corresponding curve shows a fluctuating region when the frequency is higher than some value. In this region, the shielding effectiveness fluctuated around an average value. In the whole range of testing frequency, the shielding effectiveness could be remarkably enhanced when the thickness increased for the sample with the same pore parameter. In addition, this titanium foam exhibited a relatively low thermal conductivity, which was measured to be about 0.4-0.8 W/(m.K) at room temperature for the sample with the porosity of 87%-89%. Besides, the thermal conductivity showed a greatly decreasing tendency when increasing the porosity of the sample. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.