Biomimetic Segmented Nanofibrous Structures Enabling Flexible Liquid-Metal Microwave Absorbers

The rapid advances in detection technologies have raised greater demands on microwave-steady materials, particularly for curved surfaces and movable components of aircraft that are highly susceptible to detection. However, electromagnetic wave (EMW) absorbers based on composite metastructures or metal-backed resonant cavities often suffer from intrinsic rigidity, resulting in poor conformability to complex surfaces and consequently compromised microwave-absorption performance. Herein, inspired by the locally segmented deformability of soft-bodied organisms, a deformation-adaptive EGaIn/CIP-TPU nanofibrous absorber is developed through liquid-metal confinement within electrospun nanofibers, which integrates segmented fiber network reconfiguration with EGaIn/CIP-induced dielectric-magnetic synergistic attenuation for flexible microwave absorption. Specifically, the flexible microwave absorber delivers a minimum reflection loss (RL) of -51.4 dB at a matching thickness of 2.2 mm. Meanwhile, these absorbers exhibit elastic recovery ratios above 70% and show stable mechanical responses over 500 compression cycles. This study demonstrates an effective balance between mechanical adaptability and microwave-absorption performance, providing a promising strategy for next-generation flexible EMWA.