Enhanced low-frequency microwave absorption of N-doped biomass derived carbon

Abstract

Hierarchical porous undoped and N-doped carbon derived from the natural spinach roots was prepared by a facile carbonization process at 600–800 ℃ respectively. The electromagnetic properties were carefully investigated in the range of 1–18 GHz in order to study the effect of the tunable permittivity on the microwave absorbing and shielding performance by modulating the intrinsic polarization of the biomass carbon. Compared with the other samples, the undoped one sintered at 650 ℃ shows the minimum reflection loss (RL) of − 42.93 dB at 16.72 GHz with a thickness of 2.0 mm, while the effective absorbing bandwidth achieves 6.46 GHz at 2.4 mm. With the N-doping, the permittivity is obviously affected by the nitrogen-containing groups and compounds induced dipolar and interfacial polarization. The RLmin of the N-doped carbon sample sintered at 700 ℃ has arrived at − 49.96 dB at 15.88 GHz with a very thin thickness of 1.5 mm. Besides, the impedance matching bandwidth can cover the L-C band in the N-doped carbon with the excellent RL of − 43.195 dB at d= 8.4 mm and f= 2.4 GHz. The competitive and tunable mechanism of the dielectric property are also studied for the tunable impedance and microwave absorption.