Manipulation of Impedance Matching toward 3D-Printed Lightweight and Stiff MXene-Based Aerogels for Consecutive Multiband Tunable Electromagnetic Wave Absorption

Xiaoyan Liu; Wenle Ma; Zhengrong Qiu; Tianyue Yang; Jianbin Wang; Xinyi Ji; Yi Huang

doi:10.1021/acsnano.3c00338

Manipulation of Impedance Matching toward 3D-Printed Lightweight and Stiff MXene-Based Aerogels for Consecutive Multiband Tunable Electromagnetic Wave Absorption

ACS Nano. 2023 May 9;17(9):8420-8432. doi: 10.1021/acsnano.3c00338. Epub 2023 Apr 19.

Authors

Xiaoyan Liu^{1

2}, Wenle Ma^{1

2}, Zhengrong Qiu^{1

2}, Tianyue Yang^{1

2}, Jianbin Wang^{1

2}, Xinyi Ji^{1

2}, Yi Huang^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ School of Materials Science and Engineering, National Institute for Advanced Materials, Nankai University, Tianjin 300350, China.
² Key Laboratory of Functional Polymer Materials, Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemical Science and Engineering (Tianjin), Nankai University, Tianjin 300350, China.

PMID: 37073866
DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.3c00338

Abstract

Highly conductive MXene material exhibits outstanding dissipation capability of electromagnetic (EM) waves. However, the interfacial impedance mismatch due to high reflectivity restricts the application of MXene-based EM wave absorbing materials. Herein, a direct ink writing (DIW) 3D printing strategy to construct lightweight and stiff MXene/graphene oxide aerogels (SMGAs) with controllable fret architecture is demonstrated, exhibiting tunable EM wave absorption properties by manipulating impedance matching. Noteworthy, the maximum reflection loss variation value (ΔRL) of SMGAs is -61.2 dB by accurately modulating the width of the fret architecture. The effective absorption region (f_E) of SMGAs exhibits consecutive multiband tunability, and the broadest tunable f_E (Δf) is 14.05 GHz, which could be continuously tuned in the whole C- (4-8 GHz), X- (8-12 GHz), and Ku-bands (12-18 GHz). Importantly, the hierarchical structures and the orderly stacking of filaments endow lightweight SMGAs (0.024 g cm^-3) with a surprising compression resistance, which can withstand 36 000 times its own weight without obvious deformation. Finite element analysis (FEA) further indicates that the hierarchical structure facilitates stress dispersion. The strategy developed here provides a method for fabricating tunable MXene-based EM wave absorbers that are lightweight and stiff.

Keywords: 3D printing; MXene aerogels; compression resistance; impedance matching; tunable electromagnetic wave absorption.