Thus, metals are the best choice because of their in-plane electrical conductivity. But metals have some drawbacks like flexibility, corrosion, and high processing cost which restrict them to use in robust environments. [4] That's why polymers came to this area as good alternatives. Among the polymer family, conducting polymers are considered as the special class of polymers. Conducting polymers possess good electronic transitions, low specific gravity, high corrosion resistance, and easy processibility. [5] But most of the conducting polymers are suffering from flexibility. Polymeric thin films with high electrical conductivity are in high demand to overcome such difficulties. [6] Most of the carbonaceous conducting materials are used for this purpose due to their high strength to weight ratio, high surface area, and excellent dielectric. [4,7,8] Though these conducting carbon allotropes already solved the problems, but still they are not solely adequate to be used as EMI shielding materials. [9,10] To nullify the EMI, magnetic component of the incident EM wave is also another major factor. [11] But these carbonaceous conducting materials possess inferior or negligible magnetic quality compared to the magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs). The inadequate magnetism results low permeability. Thus, to improve the magnetic permeability by the insertion of magnetic components could be a major solution to this problem. MNPs are the ideal choice for this purpose to set up the complementary relation between dielectric and magnetic losses. [12] The involvement of iron based MNPs namely Fe 3 O 4 , Fe nanoparticles, γ-Fe 2 O 3 are already reported by various researches. [13] MNPs absorb EM waves in a greater fraction due to their high magnetic permeability. Iron oxides are easy to attach any carbonaceous solid supports like graphene and nanotubes. For example, materials like Fe 3 O 4 /C, [14] MoS 2 /RGO/Fe 3 O 4 , [15] and C@Fe/Fe 3 O 4 showed EMI shielding behaviors where MNPs are anchored to carbon surfaces. [16] But these materials also have limitations due to their inferior complex permeability. For purely conducting polymers, the primary mechanism of shielding is reflection that results in high skin depth. But for magnetic-conducting polymer hybrids, combined effect of reflection and absorption are observed which amend the dielectric loss. [17] That'sThe current work presents the fabrication of micrometer-thick single-sidecoated surface-engineered polypropylene (PP) film for versatile flexible electronics applications. Herein, the authors report, for the first time, photopolymerized thin coating of graphene nanofibers (GNFs) and iron oxide nanoparticles (IONPs) onto non-polar plastic via surface chemistry. The fabrication is achieved by adopting three consecutive steps; initially corona treated PP films are treated with silane for thin layer silica coating. Then, the silylated PP films are brushed up by pyrrole/GNFs/IONPs mixture, followed by UV exposure. The coated films show surface conductivity in the range of ≈20 S cm −1 ...

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Alkaline exchange membrane fuel cells (AEMFCs) development is impeded by the lack of low-cost processes for fabricating catalyst layers. One bottleneck lies in using large amounts of precious group metals during the layer deposition process by spray-painting. One possible solution would be to leverage inkjet printing technologies known for their full recovery of the printed material. Recent advances in printed electronics has led to the commercialization of silver (Ag) inks. We demonstrate the electrocatalytic properties (oxygen reduction reaction (ORR)) of Ag ink. Moreover, we show that a simple galvanic replacement reaction (GRR) on the Ag ink yields Ag 0.9 M 0.1 (M = Pt or Pd) hollow nanoparticles. The resultant electrocatalyst demonstrated high activity for the ORR in alkaline medium. The Ag colloidal dispersion (the ink) reacted with a minute amount of platinum group metals precursors (PGMs). X-ray diffraction (XRD) and electron microscopy confirmed the hollow morphology and the formation of Pt or Pd-rich surfaces. The onset voltage for alkaline ORR activities follows the trend Ag 0.9 Pt 0.1 > Ag 0.9 Pd 0.1 > Ag. These experiments are a first step toward inkjet printing usage for fabricating catalytic layers.

Fog accumulation on surfaces typically has a negative effect by reducing their transparency and efficiency. Applications such as plastic packaging, agricultural films, and particularly many optical devices suffer from these negative effects. One way to prevent fogging is to coat the substrate with an antifogging coating having a smooth surface and hydrophilic surface chemical groups. This causes the fog water droplets that come into contact with the substrate to completely flatten across its surface, thus retaining transparency. These coatings are mostly relegated to laboratory research due to their insufficient stability and costly synthetic processes. We proposed the use of organically modified silica particles consisting of a mixture of tetraethyl orthosilicate and methacryloxypropyltriethoxysilane, which were grown in situ in the presence of a corona-activated polyethylene film, thus providing a thin siloxane coating containing activated double bonds. An additional coating of poly(ethylene glycol) diacrylate was then spread on the coated film and polymerized via UV curing. The in situ process and UV curing anchored the coating to the substrate through covalent bonds, which provided additional stability. This coating exhibited low surface roughness and contact angle, which resulted in excellent antifogging properties when exposed to a hot-fog test. Furthermore, the antifogging coating retained its properties after 10 hot-fog cycles, indicating the high coating stability. Additionally, the coating was found durable to immersion in aqueous pH levels 1–13 and detergent solutions as well as to tape test applications and sand test. This coating was compared to a commercially available antifogging spray, which was used to coat a polyethylene film. This resulted in excellent initial antifogging properties, which decreased after exposure to durability tests. The results of the in situ coating process indicate its potential uses for industrial applications.