Parasitic reaction driven facile preparation of segregated-MXene/polycarbonate nanocomposites for efficient electromagnetic interference shielding

Conductive polymer composites with segregated structures (s-CPCs) would have great potential in electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding applications owing to their superior electrical conductivity along with a low percolation threshold. This study investigated a facile manufacturing approach for synthesizing s-CPCs by introducing parasitic reaction of MXene flakes into positively charged polycarbonate microspheres simply prepared by a cationic surfactant. As a result, an electrostatic assembly of MXene flakes and PC microspheres was successfully formed, resulting in unprecedented efficient and effective manufacturing process. Given with the fabrication approach investigated in this study, it was experimentally found that the resultant s-CPCs exhibited the considerably low percolation threshold of 0.15 vol% as well as outstanding EMI shielding performance of 38.7 ± 1.2 dB with only 2.75 vol% of MXene. This study can show, if properly optimized, the great potential of the use of s-CPCs in a wide range of EMI shielding applications.