Investigation on mechanism and microwave absorption properties of Ti3SiC2/nano-Cu powders

Abstract

In this work, Ti3SiC2/nano-Cu powders were synthesized by two different routes: mechanical ball-milling and electroless-plating process. The phase composition was identified by XRD and the microstructure was observed by SEM. Both the real and imaginary parts of complex permittivity for Ti3SiC2/nano-Cu powders prepared by electroless-plating process are higher because of the uniformly dispersing nano-Cu particles. In addition, the influences of concentration on the dielectric and microwave absorption properties were also investigated. As the content of Ti3SiC2/nano-Cu rises from 40 to 70 wt%, the real part of complex permittivity increases from 8.81 to 7.37 to 24.73–20.24, while the imaginary part enhances from 0.78–1.65 to 8.02–7.71 in the frequency range of 8.2–12.4 GHz. The most favorable absorption performance is obtained for the Ti3SiC2/nano-Cu/paraffin mixture containing 60 wt% filler with a thickness of 1.8 mm. The effective absorption bandwidth below − 10 dB is obtained in 9.2–12.2 GHz with a minimum reflection loss of − 20.42 dB at 10.88 GHz.