Fe/Fe3O4/biomass carbon derived from agaric to achieve high-performance microwave absorption

Recently, biomass carbon materials as electromagnetic wave-absorbing materials have received widespread attention due to their easy availability, low cost, and environmental friendliness. However, for the vast majority of microwave absorbing materials that possess only dielectric losses, it is difficult for them to achieve satisfactory microwave absorbing performance. This paper proposes a new strategy to prepare a magnetic biomass composite material with tunable high-performance microwave absorption using agaric as the biomass carbon precursor and ferric nitrate as the magnetic precursor. When the carbonization temperature is 800 °C, the Fe/Fe3O4/biomass carbon (Fe/Fe3O4/BC) composite exhibits excellent microwave absorption performance in the X-band. At a thickness of 2.06 mm and a frequency of 9.63 GHz, its minimum reflection loss reaches −30.41 dB, and the effective absorption bandwidth is 2.45 GHz. In the carbonization process, ferric nitrate is transformed into magnetic Fe3O4 and Fe nanoparticles. The magnetic losses generated by Fe/Fe3O4 and the dielectric losses of biomass carbon, interfacial polarization, dipole polarization and multiple reflection synergies improve the impedance matching characteristics of the composite and improve the microwave absorption performance. Therefore, the prepared Fe/Fe3O4/BC composite material has exhibits great potential as a high-efficiency microwave absorber.