Highly Stretchable Composite Foams via Sustainable Utilization of Waste Tire Rubbers for Temperature-Dependent Electromagnetic Wave Absorption

• Published in: Molecules
• Main Authors: Jiajia Zheng, Mohammed Hanshe, Weiwei He, Tianyi Hang, Zhihui Li, Shaohua Jiang, Shiju E, Xiping Li, Yiming Chen
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2022-12-01
• Subjects: porous foam; waste tire rubber; microwave absorption; mechanical property
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/1420-3049/27/24/8971

Recently, the sustainable utilization of waste resources has become a low-cost and effective strategy to design high-performance functional materials to solve the increasingly serious environmental pollution problem. Herein, the flexible and highly stretchable polyurethane (PU) composite foams assisted by one-dimensional carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and zero-dimensional Fe₃O₄ were fabricated using waste tire rubbers (WTRs) as reinforcements during a simple self-foaming process. The collaborative introduction of conductive CNTs, magnetic Fe₃O₄, and WTRs with three-dimensional cross-linked structures enabled the construction of an efficient electronic transmission path and heterointerfaces inside the composite foam. The resulting composite foam possessed a desired minimum reflection loss (RL_min) of −47.43 dB, and also exhibited superior mechanical properties with a tensile strength of >3 MPa and multiple tensile deformation recovery abilities. In addition, increasing the temperature could significantly improve the electromagnetic wave absorption performance of the composite foam. This comprehensive composite foam derived from WTRs has shown a promising development potential for using waste materials to relieve electromagnetic pollution.