Study of an energy-efficient and cost-friendly electromagnetic shielding material with three-dimensional conductive network fabricated by dispersing Ni-Fe-P alloys coated bamboo fibers in a HDPE matrix

Herein, an efficient bamboo-plastic shielding composite (BPSCs) which containing Ni-Fe-P coated bamboo fibers (BF) was proposed for the first time. The electroless plating was applied to impart a compact Ni-Fe-P coating on the BF surface. Research showed the metalized BF possesses excellent electrical conductivity, which can be facilely tuned by changing the loading amount of raw BF. Moreover, it was found the interlaced coated BF constructed abundant conductive paths in the matrix, thus formed three-dimensional conductive network, which ultimately endowed conductivity and shielding effectiveness (SE) to BPSCs. Generally, the electrical conductivity and the SE of BPSC increased with increasing filling amount of metalized BF due to the more conductive fillers correspond to more complete conductive network. However, while the conductive network was well-formed, meaning the saturation of electromagnetic conduction was reached, the further increase of filler has less effect on the SE value. The supreme SE of BPSC could reach 85 dB (0.1 MHz-2.0 GHz), achieving the targeted value of 60-120 dB for military applications, indicating a promising application in the field of aerospace, weapons equipment, etc. Interestingly, other properties of composite, such as magnetic property, thermal property, hydrophobicity and mechanical property were also studied in detail, aiming to provide more comprehensive references for the practical application of BPSCs.