High-temperature electromagnetic wave absorption properties of ZnO/ZrSiO ₄ composite ceramics

Owing to the widespread presence of electromagnetic interferences, it is necessary to develop new materials with excellent high-temperature electromagnetic wave (EM) absorption properties. In the present work, ZnO is infiltrated into porous ZrSiO₄ substrates to form ZnO/ZrSiO ₄ composite ceramics using sol-gel process. The doping of aluminum results in the improvement of electrical conductivity and the significant change in the morphology of ZnO. With the increase in environment temperature during measurement, the permittivity of the composite ceramics increases first and then decreases dramatically, which is attributed to the change in conductive loss. The electrical conductivity increases with increasing measurement temperature. However, the concentration of oxygen vacancies decreases under air atmosphere when the measurement temperature increases continuously, which results in the reduction in conductivity. Therefore, permittivities of the undoped and doped ceramics measured at 673 K are higher than the ones at the other temperatures. The composite ceramics maintain a relatively high EM absorption coefficient, low reflection coefficient (RC), and wide effective absorption bandwidth at environment temperatures up to 773 K. As a result, we conclude that the ZnO/ZrSiO₄ composite ceramics exhibit a promising prospect as a kind of high-temperature EM absorbing material.