The green synthesis and enhanced microwave absorption performance of core-shell structured multicomponent alloy/carbon nanocomposites derived from the metal-sericin complexation

Abstract Green synthesis and the adjustable microwave attenuation capability are crucial for the microwave absorption materials. In this paper, we report a green metal-sericin complexation method to synthesize the core-shell structured multicomponent alloy/carbon nanocomposites. The experimental characterizations demonstrate that by controlling the chemical compositions the alloy nanoparticles can be uniformly embedded in the carbon shell, forming a unique heterostructure that is able to enhance the dielectric loss of the nanocomposites. In specific, the optimized 1.49 mm-thick FeCoNiZn alloy@carbon nanocomposite exhibits the minimum reflection loss (RLmin) of −54.46 dB at 16.65 GHz and the 1.62 mm-thick one shows the maximum effective bandwidth (RL ≤−10 dB) of 4.19 GHz. Notably, the robust heterostructure of the synthesized nanocomposite leads to the synergistic effect of the impedance matching and the multi-loss mechanisms that involve the conduction loss, dielectric loss, and the magnetic loss, resulting in the enhanced microwave absorption performance. In short, this experimental work presents a novel and green fabrication method for constructing the magnetic metal/carbon absorbers. Based on their remarkable and adjustable microwave absorption performance, we envision the great potential applications of the FeCoNiZn alloy/carbon nanocomposite.