Regulating Percolation Threshold via Dual Conductive Phases for High-Efficiency Microwave Absorption Performance in C and X Bands

Abstract

The development of high-efficiency microwave absorbers for C and X bands still remains a challenge, limiting the settlement of corresponding electromagnetic pollution and radar stealth. In this work, a reduced graphene oxide (RGO)/Cu/Fe3O4 composite is successfully proposed by a one-step solvothermal method with a GO dispersion content of 5 mL, where Fe3O4 exhibits high magnetic loss from natural resonance at the C band, and Cu nanorods and RGO are introduced as dual conductive phases to produce suitable dielectric properties by regulating the percolation threshold. The results show that the existence of Cu nanorods significantly reduces the conductivity and dielectric loss of the composites, optimizing the coordination of attenuation capacity and impedance matching in the C and X bands. Consequently, the obtained RGO/Cu/Fe3O4 composite shows outstanding microwave absorption performance with the maximum effective absorption bandwidth (EAB) value of 5.2 GHz at a thin thickness of 3.1 mm, which covers 84% of the C band and 46% of the X band (4.64–9.84 GHz). The performance is superior to the vast majority of previous absorbers in the corresponding bands.