Ultra-light-weight microwave X-band EMI shielding or RAM material made from sustainable pyrolysed cork templates

Abstract

Cork is a renewable and sustainable material, highly porous and lightweight. We valorised waste cork and recycled wine stoppers to make pyrolysed/carbonised solid cork, for use as economic and sustainable microwave (MW) absorbers at the microwave X-band (8–12 GHz), without binder or additives. Although cork is already a very lightweight material (0.16 g cm⁻³), the pyrolysed cork is five-times less dense at 0.031 g cm⁻³, was amorphous graphitic carbon, and had an excellent shielding effectiveness (SE_T) of −18 to −38 dB, depending on thickness, with attenuation of the electromagnetic energy through internal reflection within the cellular cork structure. Furthermore, this ultra-light-weight material has an extremely high MW specific shielding effectiveness or efficiency (SSE), between −640 to −1235 dB g⁻¹ cm³ over the entire X-band range, depending on thickness (3.0–8.6 mm), one of the highest reported for any pure carbon material, this upper value being more than twice that of any previously reported graphite-based foams.