Hierarchical porous carbon fibers for broadband and tunable high-performance microwave absorption

Constructing multiple polarization losses and improving impedance matching in carbon materials is essential for improving electromagnetic wave absorption performance of carbon materials. Meanwhile, surface contamination of electromagnetic wave absorbers has a significant impact on their absorption performance. Herein, a pod-like macroporous carbon nanofibers with self-cleaning function are successfully prepared by Electrospinning-etching strategy. Through the adjustment of SiO2 and pore structure, conduction loss, dipole polarization loss, interface polarization loss, and impedance matching of carbon nanofibers are optimized simultaneously. The optimized a pod-like macroporous carbon nanofibers has strong absorption and wide effective absorption bandwidth. With a cavity content of 4%, the minimum reflection loss at 2.29 mm is -49.36 dB, and the effective absorption bandwidth is 7.6 GHz and the matched thickness is 2.16 mm. This result indicates that cavity and pod-like structure can significantly improve dielectric properties and enhance interface polarization loss and conductivity loss. The simulation results verify that the pod structure has a greater impact on surface electric field distribution, which shows that interface polarization is caused by the cavity structure. In addition, the contact angle of absorber is 105 °, which proves its self-cleaning ability. This functional absorbing material has potential to meet future practical applications.