Manipulation of Impedance Matching toward 3D-Printed Lightweight and Stiff MXene- Based Aerogels for Consecutive Multiband Tunable Electromagnetic Wave Absorption

Highly conductive MXene material exhibits outstanding dissipation capability of electromagnetic (EM) waves. However, the interfacial impedance mismatch due to high reflectivity restricts the application of MXene-based EM wave absorbing materials. Herein, a direct ink writing (DIW) 3D printing strategy to construct lightweight and stiff MXene/ graphene oxide aerogels (SMGAs) with controllable fret architecture is demonstrated, exhibiting tunable EM wave absorption properties by manipulating impedance matching. Noteworthy, the maximum reflection loss variation value (Delta RL) of SMGAs is -61.2 dB by accurately modulating the width of the fret architecture. The effective absorption region (fE) of SMGAs exhibits consecutive multiband tunability, and the broadest tunable fE (Delta f) is 14.05 GHz, which could be continuously tuned in the whole C-(4-8 GHz), X-(8-12 GHz), and Ku-bands (12-18 GHz). Importantly, the hierarchical structures and the orderly stacking of filaments endow lightweight SMGAs (0.024 g cm-3) with a surprising compression resistance, which can withstand 36 000 times its own weight without obvious deformation. Finite element analysis (FEA) further indicates that the hierarchical structure facilitates stress dispersion. The strategy developed here provides a method for fabricating tunable MXene-based EM wave absorbers that are lightweight and stiff.

Automated summary

This study presents a direct ink writing (DIW) 3D printing strategy for constructing lightweight and stiff MXene/graphene oxide aerogels (SMGAs) with controllable fret architecture, which demonstrates tunable electromagnetic wave absorption properties by manipulating impedance matching. The maximum reflection loss variation value (Delta RL) of SMGAs reaches -61.2 dB by accurately modulating the width of the fret architecture. SMGAs exhibit consecutive multiband tunability in the effective absorption region (fE), with the broadest tunable range (Delta f) of 14.05 GHz, covering the entire C (4-8 GHz), X (8-12 GHz), and Ku-bands (12-18 GHz).