Cotton fiber-derived carbon decorated with MoS2 for high electromagnetic wave absorption

Biomass-derived carbon materials have advantages such as lightweight and strong sustainability compared with traditional carbon-based absorbing materials, thus having great potential in electromagnetic wave (EMW) absorbing materials. CFC/MoS2 composites with a structure of cotton fiber-derived carbon (CFC) decorated with molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) have been prepared using the simple carbonization and hydrothermal method in this work, which had high EMW absorption. The analysis results indicate that high EMW absorption of CFC/MoS2 composites is attributed to the balanced impedance matching, while being affected by a combination of conductive loss, multiple scattering, and polarization loss. The minimum reflection loss of CFC/MoS2 composite with thickness of 3.0 mm could reach −49.7 dB and effective bandwidth could reach 3.6 GHz (8.0–11.6 GHz) at a frequency of 9.25 GHz. This work fully utilizes the advantages of biomass-derived carbon and proposes a novel research approach for development of environmentally friendly and low-cost EMW absorbing composites.