High-performance composite elastomers with abundant heterostructures for enhanced electromagnetic wave absorption with ultrabroad bandwidth

Two-dimensional (2D) MXene has attracted vast attention in electromagnetic wave absorption (EWA), but there remains a contradiction between maintaining impedance matching and enhancing dielectric loss. Herein, the multi-scale architectures of ecoflex/2D MXene (Ti3C2Tx)@zero-dimensional CoNi sphere@one-dimensional carbon nanotube composite elastomers were successfully constructed by simple liquid-phase reduction and thermo-curing method. The binding between the hybrids as fillers and ecoflex as a matrix greatly enhanced the EWA capability of the obtained composite elastomer and improved its mechanical properties. Owing to its good impedance matching, abundant heterostructures, and synergistic electrical and magnetic losses, this elastomer exhibited an excellent minimum reflection loss of-67 dB at 9.46 GHz under a thickness of 2.98 mm. In addition, its ultrabroad effective absorption bandwidth reached 6.07 GHz. This achievement will pave the way for the exploitation of multi-dimensional heterostructures as high-performance electromagnetic absorbers with superior EWA ability.

Automated summary

A multi-scale composite elastomer with ecoflex/2D MXene@zero-dimensional CoNi sphere@one-dimensional carbon nanotube was successfully synthesized. The binding between the fillers and matrix enhanced the electromagnetic wave absorption capability and mechanical properties. The composite exhibited an excellent minimum reflection loss of -67 dB at 9.46 GHz and an ultrabroad effective absorption bandwidth of 6.07 GHz.