Biomass carbon derived from pine nut shells decorated with NiO nanoflakes for enhanced microwave absorption properties

Abstract

Electromagnetic absorption materials have gained increasing attention. In this study, we report NiO decorated biomass porous carbon derived from pine nut shells as a promising microwave absorbing material by a facile strategy. The NiO/biomass porous carbon (BPC) is thermally converted from Ni(OH)₂/BPC with BPC as the base for precipitation. All products were characterized by XRD, Raman, and SEM techniques, which reveals that the NiO nanoflakes were uniformly self-assembled on the surface of the activated carbon. Compared with counterparts of pure Ni(OH)₂ and Ni(OH)₂/BPC, a large reflection loss peak of −33.8 dB at 16.4 GHz is achieved for the NiO/BPC composites, and the absorption bandwidth less than −10 dB can reach up to about 6.7 GHz (from 11.3 to 18.0 GHz) with a thickness of 8 mm. The enhanced microwave absorption properties originate from the electric/dielectric polarization and the unique NiO decorated BPC structures. The expanded interfaces, such as NiO–NiO, Ni–BPC and NiO–paraffin interfaces in the complicated porous composites, could boost the interfacial polarization as well as related relaxation which results in enhanced dielectric loss and electromagnetic absorbing properties. In addition, NiO/BPC nanocomposites exhibit comparatively better matching of permittivity and permeability. It is expected that our present investigation could provide a new possibility for biomass based fabrication of potential microwave absorbing materials.