Fabrication of magnetic tubular fiber with multi-layer heterostructure and its microwave absorbing properties

Fei Wu; Pei Liu; Jiqi Wang; Tariq Shah; Mudasir Ahmad; Qiuyu Zhang; Baoliang Zhang

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2020.05.058

Fabrication of magnetic tubular fiber with multi-layer heterostructure and its microwave absorbing properties

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2020 Oct 1:577:242-255. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2020.05.058. Epub 2020 May 28.

Authors

Fei Wu¹, Pei Liu², Jiqi Wang², Tariq Shah², Mudasir Ahmad², Qiuyu Zhang¹, Baoliang Zhang³

Affiliations

¹ School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an 710072, China; Xi'an Key Laboratory of Functional Organic Porous Materials, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an 710129, China.
² School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an 710072, China.
³ School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an 710072, China; Sunresins New Materials Co. Ltd, Xi'an 710072, China. Electronic address: blzhang@nwpu.edu.cn.

PMID: 32485408
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2020.05.058

Abstract

A new type of microwave absorbing material (TCF@Fe₃O₄@NCLs) with multi-layer heterostructure is designed and fabricated via a one-step pyrolysis process of the precursor (PF@Fe₃O₄@PDA). PF@Fe₃O₄@PDA is prepared by the technology of confined self-polycondensation, solvothermal method coupled with polymerization of dopamine (DA). The as-obtained material has the structure of tubular carbon nanofibers (TCF) embedded with Fe₃O₄ nanoparticles, dispersed Fe₃O₄ nanoparticles, and nitrogen-doped carbon layers (NCLs) from inside to outside. Notably, tubular carbon nanofibers provide the major dielectric loss. Fe₃O₄ nanoparticles significantly improve the microwave absorption ability at low frequencies and provide appropriate magnetic loss. NCLs improve the conductivity and facilitate the generation of multiple polarization effects, resulting in enhanced dielectric loss. The absorption mechanism is further elucidated. Based on the synergistic effect of double dielectric/magnetic loss composite materials, the interface introduced by multi-layer heterostructure, and conductive networks, TCF@Fe₃O₄@NCLs exhibits excellent reflection loss (RL) of -43.6 dB and effective absorption bandwidth (EBA) of 4.6 GHz (8.2-12.8 GHz) with a loading of 10%. The results demonstrate potentially promising prospects of TCF@Fe₃O₄@NCLs as new material candidate for microwave absorption.

Keywords: Confined self-polycondensation; Magnetic tubular carbon fiber; Microwave absorption; Multi-layer heterostructure; Nitrogen doping.