Durable Fe3O4/PPy Particle Flow Spun Textile for Electromagnetic Interference Shielding and Joule Heating

Wearable electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding devices are highly demanded to reduce the endlessly emerging EM pollution. Undesired durability and limited scale-up production capacity are the main obstacles to hinder the industrialized application of flexible EMI wearables. Here, a scalable Fe₃O₄/polypyrrole (PPy) embedded cotton/polypropylene (FP@CP) fabric is introduced for EMI shielding and Joule heating, which is achieved by a unique particle flow spinning method. This method can continually manufacture functional yarns in large quantities, followed by weaving into fabrics. The core-sheath yarn structure can highly embed Fe₃O₄/PPy shielding layer by polypropylene (PP) strips, which protects internal functional components from leakage or damage by the environment. Consequently, the obtained fabrics present greater durability (50 washing and 465 abrasion cycles) in comparison with most reported EMI devices. The EMI shielding mechanism was investigated through both experimental and simulation methods. It suggests that the combination of EMI reflection and absorption modes synergistically contributes to enhancing the EMI shielding property of obtained fabrics, reaching a maximum total shielding effectiveness (SE_T) of 47 dB. Besides, the composite fabric achieves a high Joule heating temperature to 105 ℃ at 3 V within 10 s due to its efficient electric-thermal property. This work paves a cost-effective way to realize scale-up manufacturing of versatile EM protection textiles to be applied in daily, military and aerospace fields.

Graphical Abstract