A facile and environmentally friendly method is proposed to prepare reduced graphene oxide⁻nickel (RGO⁻Ni) nanocomposites using γ-ray irradiation. Graphene oxide (GO) and Ni2+ are reduced by the electrons which originated from the gamma radiolysis of H₂O. The structure and morphology of the obtained RGO⁻Ni nanocomposites were analyzed using X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Raman spectroscopy. The results show that Ni nanoparticles were dispersed uniformly on the surface of the RGO nanosheets. As expected, the combination of RGO nanosheets and Ni nanoparticles improved the electromagnetic wave absorption because of the better impedance matching. RGO⁻Ni nanocomposites exhibited efficient electromagnetic wave absorption performance. The minimum reflection loss (RL) of RGO⁻Ni reached -24.8 dB, and the highest effective absorption bandwidth was up to 6.9 GHz (RL < -10 dB) with a layer thickness of 9 mm.
Keywords: Ni nanoparticles; electromagnetic wave absorbing; gamma-ray irradiation; graphene oxide; radiation-induced reduction.