Construction of multiple electron transfer paths in 1D core-shell hetetrostructures with MXene as interlayer enabling efficient microwave absorption

Abstract The exploitation of multicomponent nanocomposites with suitable hierarchical heterostructures is an attractive strategy to obtain high performance microwave absorption materials. In this work, a versatile strategy is proposed for synthesizing 1D hierarchical core-shell structure with Co-ZIF arrays derived carbon nanotubes (CNTs) coupled on cotton fiber (CF)-supported MXene shell (Co/CNTs-MXene@CF). The advantages of Co-ZIF arrays derived CNTs and MXene dielectric layer can be efficiently integrated to realize multiple electron transfer paths by the construction of the well-designed hierarchical structure. The designed heterogeneous composites consist of the interlayer MXene and CNTs grow sequentially from the outermost Co-ZIF nanosheet arrays with appropriate conductivity and abundant heterointerfaces, which can improve the conduction loss and interfacial polarization response. As expected, the elaborate 1D Co/CNTs-MXene@CF heterostructures exhibit the optimal reflection loss of −61.41 dB at 2.52 mm and effective absorption bandwidth reaches 5.04 GHz with a thickness of only 1.5 mm. The experimental results demonstrate that the optimized structure dramatically improves the electromagnetic wave attenuation behavior. This work illuminates a new design strategy for the preparation of multicomponent composites with reasonable hierarchical structure that enables high-performance microwave absorption materials.