Construction of conductive network in rare mental-doped Fe2O3/CNTs heterostructure for ultrathin electromagnetic wave absorption

Fe 2 O 3 -based electromagnetic wave (EMW) absorbers are essential components in modern aviation equipment and electronic products. To improve the overall absorption capacity, achieving thinner absorbents has become a primary issue. However, this introduces two major challenges: controlling dielectric components during designing and ensuring uniform dispersion. Here, we achieve synthesis of heterostructures containing rare metal (RM) (RM=Ce, La, Nd)-doped Fe 2 O 3 and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) through a hydrothermal synthesis strategy enabled by a hydrothermal-induced in situ reactions of the rare metals. RM-doped Fe 2 O 3 /CNTs composites exhibit strong coupling effects and ultrathin EMW absorption performance due to the formation of a conductive network and heterojunctions. The refection loss ( R L ) value of Ce-Fe 2 O 3 /75CNTs is -56.89   dB at matching thickness of 2.8   mm, and the effective absorption bandwidth (EAB) reaches 3.6   GHz at an ultrathin thickness of 1.3   mm. In particular, Nd-Fe 2 O 3 /75CNTs and La-Fe 2 O 3 /75CNTs also achieve excellent EMW absorption ability, with R L values of -54.39   dB and -53.94   dB at matching thickness of only 1.4   mm and 1.2   mm. The radar cross section (RCS) simulations demonstrate the potential of RM-doped Fe 2 O 3 /CNTs composites for practical radar stealth. These results demonstrate the promise of our rare-earth modification and conductive network construction for the design of high-performance EMW absorbers.