Materials
with low density, exceptional thermal and corrosion resistance,
and ultrahigh mechanical and electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding
performance are urgently demanded for aerospace and military industries.
Efficient design of materials’ components and microstructures
is crucial yet remains highly challenging for achieving the above
requirements. Herein, a strengthened reduced graphene oxide (SrGO)-reinforced
multi-interfacial carbon–silicon carbide (C-SiC)
n
matrix (SrGO/(C-SiC)
n
) composite is reported, which is fabricated by depositing a carbon-strengthening
layer into rGO foam followed by alternate filling of pyrocarbon (PyC)
and silicon carbide (SiC) via a precursor infiltration
pyrolysis (PIP) method. By increasing the number of alternate PIP
sequences (n = 1, 3 and 12), the mechanical, electrical,
and EMI shielding properties of SrGO/(C-SiC)
n
composites are significantly increased. The optimal composite
exhibits excellent conductivity of 8.52 S·cm–1 and powerful average EMI shielding effectiveness (SE) of 70.2 dB
over a broad bandwidth of 32 GHz, covering the entire X-, Ku-, K-,
and Ka-bands. The excellent EMI SE benefits from the massive conduction
loss in highly conductive SrGO skeletons and polarization relaxation
of rich heterogeneous PyC/SiC interfaces. Our composite features low
density down to 1.60 g·cm–3 and displays robust
compressive properties (up to 163.8 MPa in strength), owing to the
uniformly distributed heterogeneous interfaces capable of consuming
great fracture energy upon loadings. Moreover, ultrahigh thermostructural
stability (up to 2100 °C in Ar) and super corrosion resistance
(no strength degradation after long-term acid and alkali immersion)
are also discovered. These excellent comprehensive properties, along
with ease of low-cost and scalable production, could potentially promote
the practical applications of the SrGO/(C-SiC)
n
composite in the near future.