Fabrication of PDMS-ZPZ-PET Multifunctional Fabric and Its Synergetic Enhancement of Superhydrophobicity, Broadband Microwave Absorption, and Photothermal Conversion

With the increasingly severe electromagnetic wave (EMW) pollution, developing comfortable and durable multifunctional electromagnetic wave absorption (EWA) textiles has become an urgent need. In this work, a functional textile integrating superhydrophobicity, EWA performance, and photothermal property was successfully fabricated via the atomized spraying method. A ZIF-8/PPy/ZIF-8 (ZPZ) sandwich structure was constructed on polyester (PET) fabric, followed by surface modification with polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). Benefiting from the synergistic effect of the ZPZ structure, the middle PPy layer provides dielectric loss. ZIF-8 constructs a macroscopic multi-level scattering framework to optimize impedance matching, while provides high-density polarization sites to enhance dielectric loss, which achieves broadband strong absorption. At a thickness of 3.4 mm, the minimum reflection loss (RLmin) is -54.55 dB and the maximum effective absorption bandwidth (EABmax) is 7.92 GHz. PDMS not only can adjust the complex impedance coefficient, but also protect the stability of the internal structure, capable of withstanding repeated washing, abrasion and chemical erosion. Additionally, the conjugated molecular structure in PPy features abundant delocalized π electrons and a narrow band gap. PDMS-ZPZ-PET fabric demonstrates good photothermal performance with stability over multiple cycles. This simple and effective preparation method offers a new research direction for the advancement of high-performance EWA textiles.