Electroless Plating of Graphene Aerogel Fibers for Electrothermal and Electromagnetic Applications

Graphene aerogel fibers (GAFs) with low density, high specific surface area, and high porosity can be used as the host material to incorporate another component and thus form multifunctional fibers, which have potential applications in wearable devices, thermoregulating apparatus, sensors, and so forth. However, the intrinsically low electric conductivity of GAFs hampers them in the fields of electrothermal heating and electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding. Herein, we report a new aerogel fiber composed by graphene sheets and nickel nanoparticles with low density (55-192 mg/cm³), high electric conductivity (0.8 × 10³ to 4.5 × 10⁴ S/m), and high specific surface area (49-105 m²/g). The graphene/Ni aerogel fibers (GNAFs) were synthesized initially from reduced graphene oxide hydrogel fibers followed by an electroless plating process. Further investigations have demonstrated that the resulting GNAFs possess excellent electrothermal property, faster electrothermal response, high mechanical and electrical stability as the electric wire, and excellent EMI shielding performance as the composite filler. The saturated temperature of GNAFs can reach 174 °C with an applied voltage of only 5 V, and the heating rate surpasses those of commercial Kanthal and Nichrome wires about 2.1 times and 2.6 times, respectively. The EMI shielding effectiveness of GNAFs is higher than 30 dB at the long bandwidth of 12.5-20 GHz. Specifically, it can shield more than 99.99% of the incident wave at the bandwidth of 15-20 GHz.