Developing a high-performance electromagnetic microwave absorber using BaTiO₃/CoS₂/CNTs triphase hybrid

Toward the development of a novel electromagnetic microwave absorber, a CNTs-modified BaTiO₃/CoS₂ ternary nanostructure was synthesized by the hydrothermal method. BaTiO₃/CoS₂ nanocomposite was connected by CNTs, forming conductive networks for electron migration and hopping. An array of techniques were used to characterize the products, including XRD, BET, FTIR, Raman, XPS, FESEM, HR-TEM, and VNA. For the BaTiO₃/CoS₂/CNT nanocomposite, a Minimum reflection loss (RL_min) of −72.2 dB (99.999 95% wave absorption) was recorded for thicknesses of 4 mm at 4.44 GHz. Furthermore, the effective absorption bandwidth (EAB) of 6.9 GHz was obtained with a coating thickness of 1.5 mm. Moreover, the RL values for the pure BaTiO₃ phase and BaTiO₃/CoS₂ binary nanocomposite, respectively, reach −20.3 dB and −42.5 dB. The specific RL values (SRL1t and SRL1), impedance matching (|Δ|) as well as EAB values of the prepared nanocomposite were much better than those of the previous BaTiO₃-based absorbers. To explain the microwave absorbing properties, the conductive loss and magnetic loss mechanisms were thoroughly investigated.