Boosted electromagnetic wave absorption performance from vacancies, defects and interfaces engineering in Co(OH)F/Zn0.76Co0.24S/Co3S4 composite

The vacancies, defects and interfaces engineering is a powerful approach to regulate electromagnetic (EM) parameters and enhance absorption ability, but has not been completely elucidated, especially in binary metal sulfides (BMS). Herein, to get deeper insight into such mentioned-above engineering in boosting EMW absorption ability, two different strategies are presented and compared. Namely, a simple oxidation and scalable solvothermal sulfuration approaches are conducted to respectively synthesize the corresponding ZnCo2O4/ZnO composites and Co(OH)F/Zn0.76Co0.24S/Co3S4 composites. Especially, employing a series of characterization techniques, we pioneer to directly discover that a large number of sulfuration-induced sulfur vacancies observed by XPS, lattice defects and heterogeneous interfaces evidenced by HR-TEM, Raman and PL spectra are responsible for the enhanced polarization loss and conduction loss of Co(OH)F/Zn0.76Co0.24S/Co3S4. Therefore, the remarkable validity of sulfuration strategy for elevating EMW absorption ability by vacancies, defects and interfaces is revealed in comparison with oxidation tactic, which is largely significant in optimizing the EMW absorption capacity.

Automated summary

The study investigates the effectiveness of using vacancies, defects, and interfaces engineering to regulate electromagnetic parameters and enhance absorption capacity. By comparing two different strategies, the presence of sulfur vacancies, lattice defects, and heterogeneous interfaces in the synthesized composites were found to play a significant role in boosting EM wave absorption ability.