Facile synthesis of tubular magnetic carbon nanofibers by hypercrosslinked polymer design for microwave adsorption

In this study, a simple and efficient method for fabrication of tubular magnetic carbon nanofibers (TMCF) has been developed. Firstly, tubular polymer nanofiber precursors are synthesized by confined self-condensation method. After carbonization of polymer and in situ transformation of FeCl₃ at high temperature, TMCF loaded with Fe nanoparticles is obtained. It has been found that carbonization temperature has significant effects on conductivity, specific surface area, pore volume, defects number in carbon component, and magnetic content of TMCF. The influence of composition, structure, and filler content on microwave absorption properties is revealed. Meanwhile, the microwave absorption mechanism has been analyzed in depth, which benefits from the designed unique structure. The TMCF obtained at 700°C exhibited best performance with the filler content of 15%. The minimum reflection loss is −47.33 dB@2.2 mm, the effective absorption bandwidth is 6.5 GHz (RL < 10 dB), and the matching frequency is 14.1 GHz. The obtained TMCF is lightweight and possess excellent microwave absorption ability, which can be widely used as highly efficient microwave absorber.