Polypyrrole-derived N-doped carbon nanoribbon for broadband microwaves absorption

In this work, we successfully synthesize N-doped carbon nanoribbon (NCNR) from polypyrrole precursor and investigate their dielectric and microwaves absorption (MA) properties. NCNR appears as two-dimensional ribbon-like microstructure with tunable N-doping ratio. The dielectric property of NCNR can be tuned by N-doping content controlling. The results demonstrate that NCNR exhibits excellent MA performance at a filler-loading ratio of only 5 wt%. When the sample thickness is 3.3 mm, the maximal absorption reaches − 73.76 dB at 10.48 GHz. The maximum efficient bandwidth gets to 7.4 GHz (10.6–18 GHz), under a sample thickness of 2.7 mm. A model that refers to conductive loss, polarization relaxation, and impedance match is adopted to explain the MA mechanism of NCNR. This research opens up the exploration of NCNR in the field of MA, and provides a new idea for the design of carbon-related broad band MA materials.