High-loading magnetic nanocrystals well-dispersed onto carbon nanosheet honeycombs as ultralight and broadband microwave absorbers

Abstract

Homogenously and densely dispersing small-sized magnetic particles into hierarchically porous carbon matrices is essential yet challenging for high-performance carbon-based microwave absorbers with balanced impedance matching and strong attenuation ability. Herein, we propose a general and scalable strategy by direct pyrolysis of solid polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) dissolved with metal (i.e., Fe, Co, and Ni) nitrates to prepare carbonaceous-magnetic hybrid absorbers. Benefiting from coordination interactions of carbonyl group-rich PVP molecules toward metal ions and the thermal foaming effect of PVP, the optimized CoNi-based composite material possesses a honeycomb-like architecture built by ultrathin (<2 nm) carbon nanosheets embedded with a high-loading (>50 wt%) of ultrafine CoNi alloy nanocrystals (an average size of ∼20 nm). Such structural characteristics endow the absorber with an ultralow tap density of 87.0 mg cm−3 and excellent microwave absorption performance with a superior reflection loss of −51.4 dB at a thickness of 2.6 mm and an effective absorption bandwidth of 7.2 GHz (10.5−17.7 GHz). Moreover, this synthesis methodology is universally applicable and can easily be extended to prepare carbon honeycomb composite absorbers decorated with other magnetic nanocrystals.