Magnetic coupling engineered porous dielectric carbon within ultralow filler loading toward tunable and high-performance microwave absorption

Developing microwave absorption (MA) materials with satisfied comprehensive performance is a great challenge for tackling severe electromagnetic pollution. In particular, the magnetic component/carbon hybrids absorbers always suffer from high filler loading. Herein, we propose a feasible strategy to construct hierarchical porous carbon with tightly embedded Ni nanoparticles (Ni@NPC). These highly dispersed Ni nanoparticles produce strong magnetic coupling networks to enhance magnetic loss abilities. Moreover, the interconnected hierarchical dielectric carbon network affords favorable dipolar/interfacial polarization, conduction loss, multiple reflection and scattering. Impressively, with an ultralow filler loading of 5 wt.%, the resultant Ni@NPC/paraffin composite achieves an excellent MA performance with a minimum reflection loss of as high as -72.4 dB and a broad absorption bandwidth of 5.0 GHz. This capability outperforms most current magnetic-dielectric hybrids counterparts. Furthermore, the MA capacity can be easily tuned with adjustments in thickness, content and type of magnetic material. Thus, this work opens up new avenues for the development of high-performance and lightweight MA materials. (C) 2021 Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of The editorial office of Journal of Materials Science & Technology.

Automated summary

A strategy to construct hierarchical porous carbon with embedded Ni nanoparticles for microwave absorption applications is proposed, demonstrating excellent performance with ultralow filler loading. The material achieved a minimum reflection loss of -72.4 dB and a broad absorption bandwidth of 5.0 GHz. This work opens up new avenues for the development of high-performance and lightweight MA materials.