In situ anchoring of Fe₃O₄/CNTs hybrids on basalt fiber for efficient electromagnetic wave absorption

Abstract

The development of practical and efficient electromagnetic wave (EMW) absorbing materials is a challenging research problem. A mussel-inspired molecular structure regulation strategy using polydopamine to increase the roughness and functional groups of the basalt fiber (BF) surface, thereby improving the interfacial adhesion. Herein, a novel BF-Fe3O4/CNTs heterostructure is synthesized through a dip-coating adsorption process. The three-dimensional network structure of Fe3O4/CNTs hybrid in-situ anchored on the surface of BF, which endows the composite to have good intrinsic magnetic and dielectric properties. Modulation of EMW absorption performance by controlling the addition of CNTs, the minimum RL of BF-Fe3O4/7C reaches to -40.57 dB at a thickness of 1.5 mm with CNTs addition of 7%. The enhanced EMW absorption performance of BF-Fe3O4/7C heterostructure may be attributed to the hollow magnetic Fe3O4 spheres and the synergistic effects of interfacial polarization, conduction loss, magnetic resonance loss and multiple reflection/scattering inside the BF. This work provides a simple pathway to design EMW absorbing materials with good environmental stability.