Fabrication and microwave absorption properties of ZnO@YCo core–shell composites
摘要
Conventional microwave-absorbing materials struggle to meet modern demands for ‘thinness, light weight, wide bandwidth, and strong absorption’ in complex electromagnetic environments. Furthermore, emerging applications require new functionalities, specifically low-frequency absorption and multi-band response. To address these challenges, this work designs and constructs a multi-mechanism synergistic absorbing system based on a rare earth-transition metal Y-Co (Y2Co17) alloy. The system is fabricated via heterogeneous deposition and thermal treatment to obtain ZnO@YCo composites. The results offer significant implications for the development of low-frequency and multi-band electromagnetic wave-absorbing materials. The main research contents and findings are as follows: A heterogeneous deposition method was employed to introduce needle-like ZnO heterostructures on the surface of YCo particles, followed by thermal treatment to optimize the absorption performance of ZnO@YCo composites. By adjusting the heat treatment temperature, the ZnO morphology was tuned. At 300 °C, the ZnO coating exhibited a well-defined structure with minimal agglomeration. The material demonstrated enhanced low-frequency absorption while retaining good performance in the high-frequency range (14–18 GHz). At a thickness of 6 mm, the minimum RL of ZnO@YCo reached − 5.86 dB at 5.6 GHz, outperforming the pristine YCo powders (RL > − 2.5 dB), thus exhibiting promising low-frequency absorption capabilities.