Microporous polythiophene (MPT)-guest complex derived magnetic metal sulfides/carbon nanocomposites for broadband electromagnetic wave absorption

Abstract Electrical and magnetic properties are two crucial factors for the designing of broadband electromagnetic wave absorption (EWA) materials. In this work, we synthesized various magnetic metal sulfides/carbon (MxSy/C) nanocomposites from the precursor complex of metal in microporous polythiophene (MPT), and systematically investigated their EWA properties and mechanism. The characterization results indicate that MxSy were determined to be Fe7S8/C, Co9S8/C and Ni4S3/C, respectively. It is observed that MxSy/C nanocomposites exhibit remarkable EWA performances, where the maximal absorption gets to -51.3 dB, and efficient absorption can be realized in 10.32–18 GHz (7.68 GHz), which is superior to most reported magnetic carbonaceous EWA composites. Beside, the efficient absorption can be tuned to cover Ku band X band, demonstrating their great potential in practical applications. Improved conductance loss, obvious polarization relaxation, and apparent eddy current loss are deemed to make the predominant contributions to the high-performance EWA. This research opens up the exploration of novel nanocomposite coupling dielectric loss and magnetic loss using MPT-metal complex precursor for EWA applications.