Investigating the effect of honeycomb structure composite on microwave absorption properties

Abstract In this report, we designed and fabricated carbon-coated honeycomb microwave absorbing materials (HMAMs), which were lightweight with high stiffness and exhibited broadband performance. The effect of structural parameters such as pore size, honeycomb height, coating thickness, permittivity and dielectric dissipation factor of the coating, on the microwave absorption was analyzed in detail. An effective homogeneous model was established through the effective medium theory, which was used to predict the microwave absorption properties and elucidate the mechanism. The fabricated HMAMs showed a broadband absorption property with three absorption peaks located at 4 GHz, 10 GHz and 17 GHz with reflection loss of −10 dB, −20 dB, −25 dB, respectively. This paper not only fabricates a multiple absorbing band HMAMs, but also provides an intuitive overview of the factors affecting absorption performance of HMAMs. Additionally, the proposed method is also capable of predicting microwave absorption properties of HMAMs.