Electromagnetic absorption properties of TiC/Fe@nitrogen-doped carbon nanohorn composites

Fe/C composites have attracted much attention due to their excellent microwave absorption properties, but their impedance matching and matched thickness need to be further optimised. In this paper, TiC was introduced on the basis of the preparation of nitrogen-doped carbon nanohorns (Fe@NCNHs) encapsulating Fe nanoparticles by high-temperature plasma discharge method, and N-doped carbon nanohorns (TiC/Fe@NCNHs) composites encapsulating TiC and Fe nanoparticles were successfully synthesised. This composite material has good impedance matching and various loss mechanisms such as dielectric loss, magnetic loss, reflection loss, etc., and exhibits good electromagnetic wave attenuation performance. The experimental results show that the optimum wave-absorbing performance is achieved when the loadings of Fe and TiC nanoparticles are 9wt% and 7wt%, respectively. At a frequency of 17.66 GHz with a matched thickness of 1.4 mm, the minimum reflection loss reaches −41.62 dB and the effective absorption bandwidth is 4.85 GHz (13.15-18 GHz). In this study, the problem of poor impedance matching of Fe/C composites is solved, and the electromagnetic wave attenuation performance is further optimised, and the TiC/Fe@NCNHs wave-absorbing materials are obtained as "thin, light, wide and strong".