SCIENCE@home

Melanin-like nanofibers with highly ordered structures achieve ultrahigh specific electromagnetic interference shielding efficiency

Peng Chen,Shibo He,Tianyou Wang,Chencan Wang,Junru Tao,Yiwen Li

Published 2025 in Nature Communications

ABSTRACT

Lightweight, high-performance electromagnetic shielding materials rely on the precise design of electromagnetic response structures. Conventional shielding materials often involve complex fabrication of conjugated composites or graphitization of organic materials, facing challenges in balancing their performance and processability. As such, seeking and designing intrinsically conjugated materials with superior processability is crucial. In this work, we have innovatively engineered those bioinspired polymers with highly ordered microstructures, using a 5, 6-dihydroxyindole ring tetramer framework to construct highly ordered melanin-like nanofibers by tuning π–π stacking. The resulting melanin-like aerogels represent surprising microwave absorption performance, a maximum reflection loss of −68.87 dB, and an effective absorption bandwidth of 5.25 GHz. In the X-band, the aerogel reached the specific EMI shielding efficiency of 47909.9 dB cm2/g. This work represents the first successful extension of melanin-like polymers into the microwave spectrum, demonstrating great potential in the electromagnetic field. Lightweight electromagnetic shielding materials are of interest, though it is challenging to balance performance and processability with conventional materials. Here, the authors report, an ordered melanin-like polymer, using π–π stacking, for a microwave shielding material.

PUBLICATION RECORD

CITATION MAP

EXTRACTION MAP

CLAIMS

  • No claims are published for this paper.

CONCEPTS

  • No concepts are published for this paper.

REFERENCES

Showing 1-61 of 61 references · Page 1 of 1

CITED BY

Showing 1-22 of 22 citing papers · Page 1 of 1