Novel Scale-Like Structures of Graphite/TiC/Ti3C2 Hybrids for Electromagnetic Absorption

Electromagnetic (EM) absorbing and shielding materials have attracted great interests due to the increasing electromagnetic pollutions in the past years. Microstructure plays a crucial role in determining the performance of the above materials. Herein, a scale-like structure based on Ti3C2 Mxenes is proposed to approach improved EM absorption properties. For the first time, graphite/TiC/Ti3AlC2 (G/TiC/Ti3AlC2) hybrids are fabricated in a molten salts bath and graphite/TiC/Ti3C2 (G/TiC/Ti3C2) hybrids are obtained after Al atoms are etched from G/TiC/Ti3AlC2. In G/TiC/Ti3C2, Ti3C2 sheets are perpendicular to the plane of G/TiC, which like a bionic structure of fish scale. The scale-like G/TiC/Ti3C2 hybrids are dispersed in paraffin matrix to evaluate the EM properties. Owing to the structure-induced EM absorption mechanism, G/TiC/Ti3C2 show much enhanced EM absorption ability than those materials without structure design, e.g., G/TiC/Ti3AlC2, pure Ti3C2, G/TiC, and the simple mixture of G/TiC with Ti3C2 (G/TiC+Ti3C2). The minimum reflection coefficient (RC) of G/TiC/Ti3C2 with the sample thickness of 2.1 mm reaches -63 dB and the effective absorption bandwidth (the frequency where RC is lower than -10 dB) is more than 3.5 GHz. The results indicate that the scale-like structure can greatly improve the EM absorption ability.