Boosting electromagnetic wave absorption of Ti <sub>3</sub>AlC <sub>2</sub> by improving effective electrical conductivity
Kaiyu Guo, Lin Chen, Guan‐Jun Yang
Abstract
Electromagnetic wave absorbing (EMA) materials at high temperatures are limited by poor conduction loss. However, adding conductors simultaneously increases conduction loss and interface polarization loss, leading to a conflict between impedance matching and electromagnetic wave loss. This will prevent electromagnetic waves from entering EMA materials, finally reducing the overall absorbing performance. Here, the effective electrical conductivity is enhanced by synchronizing particle size and grain number of Ti<sub>3</sub>AlC<sub>2</sub> in order to increase the conduction loss and avoid the conflict between impedance matching and electromagnetic wave loss. As a result, the best absorbing performance with an effective absorption bandwidth (EAB) of 4.8 GHz (10.6 ~ 15.4 GHz) at a thickness of only 1.5 mm is realized, which is the best combination of wide absorption bandwidth and small thickness, and the minimum reflection loss (<em>RL</em><sub>min</sub>) reaches -45.6 dB at 4.1 GHz. In short, this work explores the EMA material regulating mechanism of effective electrical conductivity by simulated calculations using VASP and COMSOL as well as a series of experiments, which provides new insight into the rational design of anisotropic electrical conductivity materials.