Facile design of nitrogen-doped reduced graphene oxide/zinc ferrite hybrid nanocomposites with excellent microwave absorption in the X-band

Abstract

Abstract Herein, nitrogen-doped reduced graphene oxide/zinc ferrite (NRGO/ZnFe2O4) hybrid nanocomposites were synthesized through a facile one-pot hydrothermal strategy by using graphene oxide (GO) as a substrate. Results demonstrated that the additive amounts of GO had remarkable influence on the micromorphology and microwave absorption properties of NRGO/ZnFe2O4 hybrid nanocomposites. The as-prepared hybrid nanocomposites showed good dispersion of nanoparticles as the additive amounts of GO increasing and numerous ZnFe2O4 nanoparticles uniformly loaded on the crumpled surface of thinly flake-like NRGO were observed. It was found that the obtained hybrid nanocomposites exhibited obviously enhanced microwave absorption performance than that of pure ZnFe2O4. Remarkably, the minimum reflection loss reached −54.6 dB at 10.0 GHz (X-band) and effective absorption bandwidth achieved 4.2 GHz (11.8–16.0 GHz) with a thickness of merely 2.0 mm and filler loading of 40 wt%. It was believed that our results could be helpful for designing and fabricating graphene-based composites as high-efficient microwave absorbers.