To solve the pollution problem of electromagnetic waves, new electromagnetic shielding materials should meet the requirements of being lightweight with high electrical conductivity. In this work, the combination of silver (Ag) nanoparticles and nitrogen doping (N-doping) was expected to tune the electromagnetic and physical properties of Ti3C2Tx MXene, and the Ag@N-Ti3C2Tx composites were fabricated through the hydrothermal reactions. The nitrogen doped (N-doped) Ag@Ti3C2Tx composites showed a hollow structure with a pore size of 5 μm. The influence of N-doped degrees on the electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding performance was investigated over 8-18 GHz. Therefore, the controlled N-doping composites exhibited reflection-based EMI shielding performance due to the electrical conductivity and the special three-dimensional (3D) honeycomb-like structure. The achieved average EMI shielding values were 52.38 dB at the X-band and 72.72 dB at the Ku-band. Overall, the Ag@N-Ti3C2Tx foam, due to its special 3D honeycomb-like structure, not only meets the characteristics of light weight, but also exhibits ultra-high-efficiency EMI shielding performance, revealing great prospects in the application of electromagnetic wave shielding field.
Keywords: Ag@N-Ti3C2Tx composites; electromagnetic interference; honeycomb-like structure; multi-reflections; nitrogen doping.