Constructing Conductive Gratings in Polyurethane Foams for Tunable Electromagnetic Shielding <italic style="font-style: italic">via</italic> a Region-selective Silver Plating Process

Ming-Feng Yang; Jing-Rui Fu; Nan Qin; Ming Wang

doi:10.1007/s10118-026-3729-z

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Constructing Conductive Gratings in Polyurethane Foams for Tunable Electromagnetic Shielding via a Region-selective Silver Plating Process

RESEARCH ARTICLE | Updated：2026-09-23

- Constructing Conductive Gratings in Polyurethane Foams for Tunable Electromagnetic Shielding via a Region-selective Silver Plating Process
- Constructing Conductive Gratings in Polyurethane Foams for Tunable Electromagnetic Shielding via a Region-selective Silver Plating Process
- Chinese Journal of Polymer Science 2026年44卷第10期页码：3437-3449
- Affiliations：
  
  a.Academy for Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China
  b.State Key Laboratory of Solid Lubrication, Lanzhou Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou 730000, China
- Author bio：
  
  mwang@swu.edu.cn
- Funds：
  
  This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 52573308), the Opening Project of State Key Laboratory of Solid Lubrication (No. LSL2416), Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. SWU-KF25028), and the Natural Science Foundation Project of Chongqing (No. cstc2024ycjh-bgzxm0005) for their financial support. We also thank the Analytical & Testing Center at Southwest University for SEM analysis.;The authors declare no interest conflict.Electronic supplementary information (ESI) is available free of charge in the online version of this article at http://doi.org/10.1007/s10118-026-3729-z.Data will be made available from the corresponding author on request.
- DOI：10.1007/s10118-026-3729-z
  中图分类号：
- 收稿：2026-03-25，
  
  录用：2026-04-25，
  
  网络首发：2026-07-01，
  
  纸质出版：2026-10-05
- Accepted：
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Yang, M. F.; Fu, J. R.; Qin, N.; Wang, M. Constructing conductive gratings in polyurethane foams for tunable electromagnetic shielding via a region-selective silver plating process. Chinese J. Polym. Sci. 2026, 44, 3437–3449

Ming-Feng Yang, Jing-Rui Fu, Nan Qin, et al. Constructing Conductive Gratings in Polyurethane Foams for Tunable Electromagnetic Shielding via a Region-selective Silver Plating Process[J]. Chinese Journal of Polymer Science, 2026, 44(10): 3437-3449. DOI: 10.1007/s10118-026-3729-z.
Yang, M. F.; Fu, J. R.; Qin, N.; Wang, M. Constructing conductive gratings in polyurethane foams for tunable electromagnetic shielding via a region-selective silver plating process. Chinese J. Polym. Sci. 2026, 44, 3437–3449 DOI： 10.1007/s10118-026-3729-z.

Ming-Feng Yang, Jing-Rui Fu, Nan Qin, et al. Constructing Conductive Gratings in Polyurethane Foams for Tunable Electromagnetic Shielding via a Region-selective Silver Plating Process[J]. Chinese Journal of Polymer Science, 2026, 44(10): 3437-3449. DOI: 10.1007/s10118-026-3729-z. DOI：

摘要

Conductive gratings were constructed in polyurethane foam

via

a 3D-printed mold-assisted region-selective silver plating process to achieve nondestructive EMI shielding switches with reversible EMI SE values from 3.53 dB to 34.04 dB.

Abstract

In this study

unique conductive gratings were constructed in polyurethane (PU) foams to achieve tunable electromagnetic shielding. First

a mold enabling region-selective silver plating was fabricated through model design and 3D printing technology. Second

PU foam was placed inside the mold to create controllable exposure regions. Third

a region-selective silver plating process was achieved by exploiting this localized exposure

thereby successfully constructing conductive grating composite foams (grating-Ag/PDA@PU). The effects of the grating number

arrangement pattern

spacing

and incident angle of electromagnetic waves on the electromagnetic interference shielding effectiveness (EMI SE) were systematically investigated

revealing the structure-property relationship between shielding performance and grating geometric parameters. The results indicate that the EMI SE values of a single-layer conductive grating are positively correlated with the number of gratings. For a multilayer conductive grating

staggered parallel arrangements exhibit superior shielding performance compared to simple parallel arrangements. Appropriately increasing the spacing between gratings helps reduce mutual electromagnetic coupling

thereby enhancing the overall EMI SE values. It was also found that a nondestructive electromagnetic shielding switch could be realized simply by flipping the sample. Specifically

the EMI SE values changing from 3.53 dB to 34.04 dB can be achieved by simply flipping the foams. This study provides new insights into the design and fabrication of tunable conductive gratings for use in electromagnetic shielding switches.

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references

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Constructing Conductive Gratings in Polyurethane Foams for Tunable Electromagnetic Shielding via a Region-selective Silver Plating Process

Constructing Conductive Gratings in Polyurethane Foams for Tunable Electromagnetic Shielding via a Region-selective Silver Plating Process

DOI：10.1007/s10118-026-3729-z

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Abstract

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