The excellent electromagnetic wave absorbing properties of carbon fiber composites: the effect of metal content

Abstract

In this work, the effect of metal loading on electromagnetic (EM) absorbing performance was investigated to obtain an excellent EM absorber through a simple process. Specifically, iron/cobalt/carbon nanocomposite fibers were prepared using electrospinning and the following heat-treatment method. With the increase of the metal filling ratio, the reflection loss (RL) of the composites shows a trend of increasing first and then decreasing. It can be concluded that the optimal metal content can provide good dielectric loss and magnetic loss, which is helpful in achieving excellent RL. When the filling ratio of the metal was 50 wt%, the sample showed a minimum RL value of −38.1 dB at a matching thickness of 2.5 mm with an effective bandwidth of 4.1 GHz. In addition, the radar cross section (RCS) reduction of composites was carried out using ANSYS Electronics Desktop 2018 (HFSS) to simulate the threat from a bistatic radar system in practical application. The results show that the sample can effectively broaden the detection angle. Hence, carbon fibers can improve the absorbing performance by loading an appropriate amount of metal, which provides a reference for the preparation process of absorbing materials.