State-of-the-art in carbides/carbon composites for electromagnetic wave absorption

Electromagnetic wave absorbing materials (EWAMs) have made great progress in the past decades, and are playing an increasingly important role in radiation prevention and antiradar detection due to their essential attenuation toward incident EM wave. With the flourish of nanotechnology, the design of high-performance EWAMs is not just dependent on the intrinsic characteristics of single-component medium, but pays more attention to the synergistic effects from different components to generate rich loss mechanisms. Among various candidates, carbides and carbon materials are usually labeled with the features of chemical stability, low density, tunable dielectric property, and diversified morphology/microstructure, and thus the combination of carbides and carbon materials will be a promising way to acquire new EWAMs with good practical application prospects. In this review, we introduce EM loss mechanisms related to dielectric composites, and then highlight the state-of-the-art progress in carbides/carbon composites as high-performance EWAMs, including silicon carbide/carbon, MXene/carbon, molybdenum carbide/carbon, as well as some uncommon carbides/carbon composites and multicomponent composites. The critical information regarding composition optimization, structural engineering, performance reinforcement, and structure-function relationship are discussed in detail. In addition, some challenges and perspectives for the development of carbides/carbon composites are also proposed after comparing the performance of some representative composites.

Preparation of porous Fe2O3 nanorods-reduced graphene oxide nanohybrids and their excellent microwave absorption properties

In this paper, α-Fe2O3 nanoparticles (NPs)-reduced graphene oxide (RGO), α-FeOOH nanorods (NRs)-RGO and porous α-Fe2O3 NRs-RGO could be selectively synthesized by hydrothermal method. The investigations indicated that the obtained α-Fe2O3 NPs, α-FeOOH NRs and porous α-Fe2O3 NRs were either attached on the surface of RGO sheets or coated uniformly by the RGO sheets. And the as-prepared nanohybrids exhibited excellent microwave absorption performance, which was proved to be ascribed to the quarter-wavelength matching model. The optimum reflection loss (RL) values for α-Fe2O3 NPs-RGO, α-FeOOH NRs-RGO and porous α-Fe2O3 NRs-RGO were ca. -32.3, -37.4 and -71.4 dB, respectively. Moreover, compared to the obtained α-Fe2O3 NPs-RGO and α-FeOOH NRs-RGO, the as-prepared porous α-Fe2O3 NRs-RGO nanohybrids exhibited enhanced microwave absorption properties because of their special structure and synergetic effect. The possible enhanced microwave absorption mechanisms were discussed in details. Our results confirmed that the geometrical morphology had a great influence on their microwave absorption properties, which provided a promising approach to exploit high performance microwave absorbing materials.

Heteronanostructured Co@carbon nanotubes-graphene ternary hybrids: synthesis, electromagnetic and excellent microwave absorption properties

In order to explore high efficiency microwave absorption materials, heteronanostructured Co@carbon nanotubes-graphene (Co@CNTs-G) ternary hybrids were designed and produced through catalytic decomposition of acetylene at the designed temperature (400, 450, 500 and 550 °C) over Co₃O₄/reduced graphene oxide (Co₃O₄/RGO). By regulating the reaction temperatures, different CNT contents of Co@CNTs-G ternary hybrids could be synthesized. The investigations indicated that the as-prepared heteronanostructured Co@CNTs-G ternary hybrids exhibited excellent microwave absorption properties, and their electromagnetic and microwave absorption properties could be tuned by the CNT content. The minimum reflection loss (RL) value reached approximately −65.6, −58.1, −41.1 and −47.5 dB for the ternary hybrids synthesized at 400, 450, 500 and 550 °C, respectively. And RL values below −20 dB (99% of electromagnetic wave attenuation) could be obtained over the as-prepared Co@CNTs-G ternary hybrids in the large frequency range. Moreover, based on the obtained results, the possible enhanced microwave absorption mechanisms were discussed in details. Therefore, a simple approach was proposed to explore the high performance microwave absorbing materials as well as to expand the application field of graphene-based materials.

Synthesis of high purity chain-like carbon nanospheres in ultrahigh yield, and their microwave absorption properties

In the article, we report a simple approach for the mass production of chain-like CNSs over Fe/SnO₂ nanoparticles. And ultrahigh yields (309) of CNCs were reported, and the as-synthesized chain-like CNSs exhibit good microwave absorbing ability.