Cotton fiber-derived carbon decorated with MoS2 for high electromagnetic wave absorption

Abstract

Biomass-derived carbon materials have advantages such as lightweight and strong sustainability compared with traditional carbon-based absorbing materials, thus having great potential in electromagnetic wave (EMW) absorbing materials. CFC/MoS₂ composites with a structure of cotton fiber-derived carbon (CFC) decorated with molybdenum disulfide (MoS₂) have been prepared using the simple carbonization and hydrothermal method in this work, which had high EMW absorption. The analysis results indicate that high EMW absorption of CFC/MoS₂ composites is attributed to the balanced impedance matching, while being affected by a combination of conductive loss, multiple scattering, and polarization loss. The minimum reflection loss of CFC/MoS₂ composite with thickness of 3.0 mm could reach −49.7 dB and effective bandwidth could reach 3.6 GHz (8.0–11.6 GHz) at a frequency of 9.25 GHz. This work fully utilizes the advantages of biomass-derived carbon and proposes a novel research approach for development of environmentally friendly and low-cost EMW absorbing composites.