Rational design of hollow Fe3O4 microspheres on Ti3C2Tx MXene nanosheets as highly-efficient and lightweight electromagnetic absorbers

Multilayered structures with abundant interfaces are highly desired for reducing the thickness and improving electromagnetic (EM) attenuation ability. Herein, elaborately designed laminar Fe 3 O 4 /MXene nanosheets exhibit great potential as high-efficiency and lightweight absorbers due to heterogeneous structure coupled with intensive magnetic-dielectric synergistic effect. The MXene nanosheets with metallic conductivity not only serve as a supporter to carry the magnetic Fe 3 O 4 , but also provide massive interfaces to facilitate the transport of charge carriers. Hollow Fe 3 O 4 microspheres were evenly dispersed without apparent agglomeration on the MXene surface, giving rise to largely enhanced consumption ability of –42.7 dB over a broad qualified bandwidth (5.7 GHz) at 2.5 mm. Besides, static density functional theory (DFT) method was introduced to shed light on the absorption mechanism by portraying the interaction between the Fe 3 O 4 and MXene. This study provides a crucial strategy for designing magnetic-supported composites by means of a large family of MXenes as thin and lightweight EM absorbers.