Interfacial engineering of carbon nanofiber-graphene-carbon nanofiber heterojunctions in flexible lightweight electromagnetic shielding networks

Lightweight carbon materials of effective electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding have attracted increasing interest because of rapid development of smart communication devices. To meet the requirement in portable electronic devices, flexible shielding materials with ultrathin characteristic have been pursued for this purpose. In this work, we demonstrated a facile strategy for scalable fabrication of flexible all-carbon networks, where the insulting polymeric frames and interfaces have been well eliminated. Microscopically, a novel carbon nanofiber-graphene nanosheet-carbon nanofiber (CNF-GN-CNF) heterojunction, which plays the dominant role as the interfacial modifier, has been observed in the as-fabricated networks. With the presence of CNF-GN-CNF heterojunctions, the all-carbon networks exhibit much increased electrical properties, resulting in the great enhancement of EMI shielding performance. The related mechanism for engineering the CNF interfaces based on the CNF-GN-CNF heterojunctions has been discussed. Implication of the results suggests that the lightweight all-carbon networks, whose thickness and density are much smaller than other graphene/polymer composites, present more promising potential as thin shielding materials in flexible portable electronics.