Hierarchical engineering of Large-caliber carbon Nanotube/Mesoporous Carbon/Fe3C nanoparticle hybrid nanocomposite towards Ultra-lightweight electromagnetic microwave absorber

Abstract

The rational regulation of the magnetic-dielectric composition and microstructures of the absorber is considered an important approach to optimize both the impedance matching and the electromagnetic microwave attenuation ability. Along these lines, a novel architecture-controlled large-caliber carbon nanotube/mesoporous carbon/Fe3C nanoparticle-based hybrid nanocomposites (CNT/C/Fe3C), which were derived from the CNT/polyimide (PI) assemblies anchoring ferric oxide hydrate nanoprecipitates, are presented in this work. The proposed configurations were prepared by applying a cooperative co-assembly strategy and high-temperature pyrolysis procedure for the development of an ultra-lightweight electromagnetic microwave absorber. The employed hierarchically tubular heterogeneous architecture is composed of a highly graphited CNT supporting skeleton, polyimide assemblies-converted carbon interlayer with mesopores, and uniformly distributed magnetic Fe3C nanoparticles. This unique hierarchical structure can not only induce multiple reflection and scattering effects of the incident electromagnetic microwave but also trigger dipole/interfacial polarization, ferromagnetic resonance and eddy current loss that are beneficial for the synergistic dielectric and magnetic loss. Moreover, the large-caliber CNT and mesoporous carbon interlayer can endow the as-prepared absorber with lightweight characteristics. Hence, the proposed CNT/C-EDA/Fe3C-900 hybrid nanocomposite exhibits a minimum reflection loss (RL) of −48.4 dB at a matching thickness of 3.2 mm, and the effective absorption bandwidth (RL ≤ -10 dB) almost covers the whole X-band only with a 5 wt% filler loading. Undoubtedly, these encouraging outcomes will promote the development of hierarchical engineering techniques of novel magnetic-dielectric nanocomposite absorbers.