Electromagnetic interference shielding performance and electromagnetic properties of wood-plastic nanocomposite with graphene nanoplatelets

In this paper, we investigated the electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding effectiveness of wood-polyvinyl chloride (WP)/graphene nanoplatelets (GNP) nanocomposites (0-9 wt%) which are flexible, lightweight, and resistant, and its EMI shielding performance increases based on the enhancement of graphene amount in nanocomposites. The increase of EMI shielding ability is attributed to the electromagnetic properties of the WP/GNP nanocomposites, such as permeability and permittivity. Scanning electron microscopy pictures show that GNP, even at low proportions, had a good dispersion in WP. This study is achieved by the composites that we produced in laboratory conditions with five different combinations of graphene nanoplatelets, wood, and polyvinyl chloride. According to observation, GNP loading to WP regularly increased its permeability and permittivity so that reaching to good shielding effectiveness. When we look into the contributions of reflection and absorption to the total shielding performance, shielding mostly occurred in reflection mechanism. In addition to that, the WP/GNP-5 nanocomposite with 9 wt% graphene nanoplatelets revealed the highest value of EMI shielding effectiveness (approximately 26 dB) over 8-9 GHz frequency range.