Regulating integral alignment of magnetic MXene nanosheets in layered composites to achieve high-effective electromagnetic wave absorption

Abstract

The integral structure design is equally crucial to the regulation of electromagnetic components in microwave absorbing materials. In this work, magnetic MXene/polyvinylidene fluoride composites with integral nacre-like structure were prepared by successive hot-pressing process to realize the layered arrangement of Ni anchored MXene (Ni@MXene). The order degree of Ni@MXene from random to orientation can be adjusted by gradually changing compression ratio. Interestingly, increasing the orientation degree of Ni@MXene effectively improves the dielectric constant, minimal reflection loss (RLmin) and effective absorption bandwidth (EAB) of the layered composites. This is attributed to the improved loss ability by increasing the contact areas between Ni@MXene and vertically incident electromagnetic waves, inducing multiple scattering/reflection effect, and the formation of localized conductive pathways. As a result, the layered composite with optimal layered structure delivers the best electromagnetic microwave absorption performance with a RLmin of −69.8 dB and an EAB of 4.77 GHz. Besides, increasing the orientation degree can also optimize the mechanical properties of the layered composites, with the maximum tensile strength and toughness of 32.6 MPa and 115.0 MJ m−3, respectively. Therefore, this work proves the adjustability of absorption performance by changing the distribution of absorbents, and integrates the structure and function for microwave absorption materials.