From Waste to Wealth: A Lightweight and Flexible Leather Solid Waste/Polyvinyl Alcohol/Silver Paper for Highly Efficient Electromagnetic Interference Shielding

With the popularization of 5G communications and the internet of things, electromagnetic wave (EW) radiation pollution has aroused much concern from the public, and the search for new materials and technologies for preparing electromagnetic shielding materials still continues all around the world. However, the contradiction among high shielding performance, economic applicability, and flexibility is still not well balanced. Herein, we fabricated a novel foldable leather solid waste (LSW)/polyvinyl alcohol (PVA)/silver (Ag) paper with excellent electromagnetic interference (EMI)-shielding ability using a facile but sustainable electroless plating (ELP) method with LSW as the resource. Taking PVA as a cross-linker, debundled leather fibers (LFs) generated by solid-state shearing milling could generate a flexible LSW/PVA substrate with a high specific surface area, and eventually the deposited Ag layer served as a protective layer not only to significantly improve the mechanical and thermal robustness, but also to endow the LSW/PVA/Ag paper with good hydrophobicity, which could protect from potential moisture damage. In addition to the reflection effect of metallic Ag on EW, the hierarchical structure of collagen fibers played an important role in superior high EMI-shielding effectiveness (∼55-∼90 dB) by an absorption-dominant EMI-shielding mechanism. Furthermore, a multilayer LSW/PVA/Ag paper was also prepared with enhanced EMI-shielding effectiveness of 111.3 dB benefited by constructing multiple reflection-absorption interfaces. The high-performance, environmentally friendly, and low-cost EMI-shielding materials not only offered a new avenue toward recycling LSW in a more value-added way, but also displayed promising potential for application in flexible shielding materials or wearable clothing.