3D-printed conical structure absorber based on NFG/Fe3Si/SiCnw ternary composites for multifunctional integrated electromagnetic microwave absorption

Abstract

The wave absorbers with dual functions of structural load-bearing and radar absorption have become the solution strategy to cope with the increasingly complex electromagnetic environment. In this paper, a conical structure absorber based on natural flake graphite (NFG)/Fe3Si/SiCnw ternary composites was successfully prepared by selective laser sintering (SLS) 3D printing technique starting from multi-scale design. From the material level, the in-situ grown one-dimensional SiC nanowires effectively improve the dielectric properties of the material, which increases the magnetic/dielectric loss synergy together with the magnetic material Fe3Si. The minimum reflection loss is −54.21 dB and the effective absorption bandwidth (EAB) is 4.6 GHz when the thickness is 1.5 mm. The unit structure of the conical structure absorber was structurally designed and experimentally verified at the structural level, and broadband electromagnetic absorption at 14.45 GHz was achieved and the compressive yield stress was 5.21 MPa. In addition, the EAB of both transverse electric-polarization (TE) and transverse magnetic-polarization (TM) under the variation of incidence angle from 0 to 50° exceeded 12 GHz, indicating that the conical structure absorber has excellent wide-angle absorption properties. The broadband microwave absorption performance of conical structure absorbers is attributed to the synergistic enhancement effect of improved impedance matching on the macroscopic scale and multiple electromagnetic loss mechanisms on the microscopic scale. The conical structure absorber prepared by SLS achieves material-structure-function integration of electromagnetic microwave absorption, and the multifunctional integrated design contributes to the practical application of stealth technology in the field of industrialized electromagnetic microwave absorption.