Flakes-assembled porous ZnO/Ni hybrid nanotubes for efficient electromagnetic absorption

Abstract Electromagnetic (EM) wave absorption materials with excellent absorption performances are highly desirable because of military applications and EM radiation pollution protection. In this work, we have synthesized and demonstrated the flakes-assembled porous ZnO/Ni hybrid nanotubes by combining electrospinning and hydrothermal reaction, coupled with following calcination and reduction process. The rational-designed ZnO/Ni nanocomposites exhibited extremely superb EM wave absorption property with a minimum reflection loss (RL) of −71.2 dB at 15.3 GHz, corresponding to a thickness of 3.4 mm and the maximum effective absorption bandwidth (RL≤–10 dB) is up to 9.4 GHz (8.6–18.0 GHz) with the thickness of 4.2 mm. The significant performance improvement originated from that the unique three-dimensional architecture optimized impedance matching characteristics and magnetic-dielectric synergetic effect contributed to a strong attenuation capacity. This work provided a feasible strategy to synthesize flakes-assembled nanotube microstructure and the ZnO/Ni composites promised great potential in the EM wave absorption fields.