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Lightweight Fe3C@Fe/C nanocomposites derived from wasted cornstalks with high-efficiency microwave absorption and ultrathin thickness

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Abstract

As a typical lightweight material, carbon materials have great application prospects in fabricating microwave absorbers. In this work, the Fe3C@Fe/C composites with porous microstructure are obtained by a simple and environmentally friendly method with wasted cornstalks as raw materials. The reflection loss of absorbing composites reaches the minimum value which is less than −50 dB when the thickness is 1.13 mm, while widest effective absorbing bandwidth reaches 5.1 GHz when thickness is 1.50 mm. The stalk-made nanocomposites’ excellent absorbing ability is mainly credit to excellent impedance matching and attenuation characteristics of composites, which is further credit to a synergistic influence of the dielectric loss from the multiple interfaces in porous microstructure and magnetic loss from iron nanoparticles. A low-cost method to obtain microwave absorption materials and realize high-value utilization of agricultural waste to reduce pollution caused by burning cornstalks is put forward.

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Data availability statement

Data can be made available on request to the corresponding authors.

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Funding

We appreciate the financial support from Key Research and Development Project of Shandong Province [grant No. 2019GSF109079], Postdoctoral Applied Research Project of Qingdao, the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation [2020M671992], Postdoctoral Innovation Project of Shandong Province [202003031], Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province [ZR2020QE006], and support from State Key Laboratory of Bio-fibers and Eco-textiles, Institute of Biochemical Engineering.

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Author notes

  1. Guangyu Qi and Yuan Liu contributed equally for this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Bio-Fibers and Eco-Textiles, Institute of Biochemical Engineering, College of Materials Science and Engineering, Affiliated Qingdao Central Hospital, Qingdao University, Qingdao, 266071, China

    Guangyu Qi, Yuan Liu, Lili Chen, Peitao Xie, Yiming Zhong & Chunzhao Liu

  2. Integrated Composites Laboratory (ICL), Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, 37996, USA

    Duo Pan & Zhanhu Guo

  3. Key Laboratory of Materials Processing and Mold (Zhengzhou University), Ministry of Education, National Engineering Research Center for Advanced Polymer Processing Technology, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, 450001, China

    Duo Pan

  4. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Ocean University of China, Qingdao, 266100, People’s Republic of China

    Zhicheng Shi

  5. Institute of Advanced Materials and Flexible Electronics (IAMFE), School of Chemistry and Materials Science, Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology, Nanjing, 210044, China

    Bin Quan

  6. College of Ocean Science and Engineering, Shanghai Maritime University, Shanghai, China

    Runhua Fan

Authors
  1. Guangyu Qi
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  2. Yuan Liu
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  3. Lili Chen
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  4. Peitao Xie
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  5. Duo Pan
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  6. Zhicheng Shi
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  7. Bin Quan
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  8. Yiming Zhong
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  9. Chunzhao Liu
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  10. Runhua Fan
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  11. Zhanhu Guo
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by G. Qi, Y. Liu, Y. Zhong, and B. Quan. G. Qi and P. Xie wrote the manuscript. C. Liu and P. Xie gave the meaningful advice in the analysis of the performance of nanocomposites. C. Liu, P. Xie, and R. Fan gave financial support for this work. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Peitao Xie or Chunzhao Liu.

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Qi, G., Liu, Y., Chen, L. et al. Lightweight Fe3C@Fe/C nanocomposites derived from wasted cornstalks with high-efficiency microwave absorption and ultrathin thickness. Adv Compos Hybrid Mater 4, 1226–1238 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42114-021-00368-0

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