Construction of porous graphene and network carbon nanotubes to develop high-performance and multifunctional carbon fiber composites

Structurally and functionally integrated carbon fiber reinforced polymer composites (CP) are indispensable in electronic devices, where the combination of brilliant mechanical properties, electromagnetic shielding properties and thermal management capabilities are required. Designing and optimizing the interface structure is an effective solution to the above problems. In this work, porous graphene and network carbon nanotubes were successfully integrated into CP. Graphene and carbon nanotubes form a crosslinked structure in which graphene improve the fiber/matrix interfacial bonding and carbon nanotubes enhance the matrix cohesion. Due to their synergistic enhancement, the tensile strength (183.00 ± 5.66 MPa) of graphene and carbon nanotubes reinforced CP (CG-CP) is increased by 65.85 % and the wear rate (1.19 × 10–13 ± 0.05 × 10⁻¹³ m³(N·m)⁻¹) is reduced by 74.52 %. Further, the crosslinked structure of graphene and carbon nanotubes creates a high-conductivity and heat-conductive transmission channel, enabling CG-CP to achieve an electromagnetic interference shielding efficiency of up to 48.94 dB in the X-band and 52.62 dB in the Ku-band at a thickness of 0.3 mm, and a 20.98 % improvement of thermal conductivity (0.767 ± 0.002 W(m·K)⁻¹), which simultaneously achieves excellent electromagnetic shielding performance and thermal management capability. The high-performance and multifunctional CG-CP offers a broad prospect regarding the application of advanced electronic devices.