Novel Scale-Like Structures of Graphite/TiC/Ti₃C₂ Hybrids for Electromagnetic Absorption

Electromagnetic (EM) absorbing and shielding materials have attracted great interests due to the increasing electromagnetic pollutions in the past years. Microstructure plays a crucial role in determining the performance of the above materials. Herein, a scale-like structure based on Ti₃C₂ Mxenes is proposed to approach improved EM absorption properties. For the first time, graphite/TiC/Ti₃AlC₂ (G/TiC/Ti₃AlC₂) hybrids are fabricated in a molten salts bath and graphite/TiC/Ti₃C₂ (G/TiC/Ti₃C₂) hybrids are obtained after Al atoms are etched from G/TiC/Ti₃AlC₂. In G/TiC/Ti₃C₂, Ti₃C₂ sheets are perpendicular to the plane of G/TiC, which like a bionic structure of fish scale. The scale-like G/TiC/Ti₃C₂ hybrids are dispersed in paraffin matrix to evaluate the EM properties. Owing to the structure-induced EM absorption mechanism, G/TiC/Ti₃C₂ show much enhanced EM absorption ability than those materials without structure design, e.g., G/TiC/Ti₃AlC₂, pure Ti₃C₂, G/TiC, and the simple mixture of G/TiC with Ti₃C₂ (G/TiC+Ti₃C₂). The minimum reflection coefficient (RC) of G/TiC/Ti₃C₂ with the sample thickness of 2.1 mm reaches −63 dB and the effective absorption bandwidth (the frequency where RC is lower than −10 dB) is more than 3.5 GHz. The results indicate that the scale-like structure can greatly improve the EM absorption ability.