Novel carbon encapsulated zinc ferrite/MWCNTs composite: preparation and low-frequency microwave absorption investigation

Electromagnetic pollution is one of serious problem at present, the fabrication of electromagnetic wave absorption materials with outstanding low-frequency absorption performance has become an urgent demand with significant challenge. Herein, a novel composite of carbon encapsulated zinc ferrite with MWCNTs enwound has been successfully synthesized by using co-hydrothermal and sol-gel method. The structure of 3D cross-linked network together with core-shell NPs can endow the multiple microwave absorption mechanisms e.g. interfacial and dipole polarization, conductive loss, natural resonance, eddy-current loss etc. to this ternary composite. Thus, the absorber possesses a good low-frequency microwave absorbing performance of -40.65 dB at 0.81 GHz with the efficient absorbing bandwidth of 0.45–1.42 GHz at only 2.5 mm. The splendid electromagnetic wave attenuation ability of as-prepared ternary composite demonstrates that the work reported here affords a novel route for the preparation of electromagnetic wave absorbing candidate with excellent low-frequency properties.