Hafnium boride whiskers prepared by boro/carbothermal reduction for high-performance electromagnetic wave absorption

Abstract

In this study, a chloride-assisted boro/carbothermal reduction method was employed to prepare HfB2 whiskers, aiming to address the challenges associated with large-scale preparation of HfB2 whiskers and the development of high-temperature resistant electromagnetic wave absorbing materials. When the precursors were mechanically stirred, the resulting mixture underwent calcination at 1450 °C for 3 h, leading to the formation of single-phase HfB2 whiskers. The as-synthesized HfB2 whiskers showed exceptional resistance to oxidation at temperatures up to 700 °C. The microwave absorption performance and mechanism of the HfB2 whiskers/paraffin composite were also investigated. The results revealed that the composite achieved a minimum reflection loss of −41.29 dB when the HfB2 whiskers content reached 80 wt%, while the widest effective absorption bandwidth of the composite reached 3.6 GHz when the HfB2 whiskers content increased to 82.5 wt%. This work presents a novel candidate for high-temperature resistant materials used in absorbing electromagnetic wave.