Synthesis of three-dimensional porous netlike nitrogen-doped reduced graphene oxide/cerium oxide composite aerogels towards high-efficiency microwave absorption

Three-dimensional (3D) graphene aerogels with porous structure and lightweight feature have been regarded as promising candidates for microwave attenuation. Herein, nitrogen-doped reduced graphene oxide/cerium oxide (NRGO/CeO2) composite aerogels were fabricated via a hydrothermal route. The obtained composite aerogels possessed low bulk density and unique 3D porous netlike structure constructed by the stacking of lamellar NRGO. Moreover, it was found that the microwave dissipation performance of NRGO aerogel could be notably improved through complexing with CeO2 nanoparticles and carefully regulating the contents of CeO2 in the composite aerogels. Remarkably, the attained NRGO/CeO2 composite aerogel with the content of CeO2 of 44.11 wt% presented the comprehensively excellent microwave attenuation capacity, i.e. the optimal reflection loss reached -50.0 dB (larger than 99.999% absorption) at a thickness of 4.0 mm and wide bandwidth achieved 5.7 GHz (from 12.3 GHz to 18.0 GHz, covering 95.0% of Ku-band) under an ultrathin thickness of only 1.9 mm. Furthermore, the probable microwave dissipation mechanisms of as-synthesized composite aerogels were clarified, which included the optimized impedance matching, strengthened interfacial polarization and dipole polarization relaxation, notable oxygen vacancy effect and enhanced conduction loss. This work could shed light on developing graphene-based 3D broadband microwave absorption composites.