A sustainable strategy to fabricate porous flower-like magnetic carbon composites for enhanced microwave absorption
Xihua Wang, Xiaolin Li, Jin Cui, Li Huang, Ye Yuan
Abstract
The design and fabrication of biomass derived flower-like Co@Co3O4/carbon (Co@Co3O4/C) composites used for high-performance microwave absorbing materials are described. The porous carbon skeleton provides the electronic pathway and the nucleation locus for Co@Co3O4 nanoparticles. Meanwhile, the porous Co@Co3O4/C composites comprising dielectric and magnetic components could also improve impedance matching and be advantageous to electromagnetic energy conversion. Labeled with good impedance matching and strong attenuation characteristics, Co@Co3O4/C composites show excellent microwave response where the minimum reflection loss (RLmin) of −46.4 dB and the maximum effective absorption bandwidth of 11.0 GHz can be achieved. This work not only explores high-performance microwave absorbing materials but also demonstrates that shrimp shell derived materials can be regarded as unexceptionably sustainable resources.