MoS₂ wrapped MOF-derived N-doped carbon nanocomposite with wideband electromagnetic wave absorption

Designing electromagnetic wave absorption (EMWA) materials with wide bandwidth, strong absorption, and light weight is still a great challenge for practical applications. Herein, the novel nitrogen doped carbon (NDC)/MoS₂ composite with rationally designed composition and structure was developed. The NDC particles were introduced into MoS₂ nanosheets through the calcination of ZIF-8 precursor and consequent hydrothermal process. A series of characterizations were carried out to investigate the physical properties of the as-prepared nanocomposites. The NDC particles exhibited the shape of rhombic dodecahedron with the size of about 500 nm, which were decorated on flower-shaped MoS₂ with the size of about 3 μm. With the increasing NDC content, the absorbing properties of NDC/MoS₂ composites increased firstly and then decreased. The features of NDC/MoS₂ composite including interconnected porous structure, nitrogen dopant, and appropriate electrical conductivity gave rise to the polarization, multiple reflection, multiple scattering, and impedance matching, resulting in the outstanding EMWA performance. With a filler loading ratio of 30 wt.%, the optimized EMWA property can be achieved when the mass ratio of NDC to MoS₂ was adjusted to be 1:1. At a coating thickness of 3.0 mm, the effective EMWA bandwidth (< −10 dB) reached 6.08 GHz (8.56–14.64 GHz). These satisfactory achievements provide a way for the reasonable design of high-performance EMWA and new ideas for future research on wideband EMWA.