Flower-like Ni/N-doped carbon composites with core–shell synergistic structure for broad-band electromagnetic wave absorption

Abstract The novel microstructure of magnetic-carbonaceous composites has become a prevalent route to improve electromagnetic wave absorption (EMWA) performance. Flower-like Ni/nitrogen-doped carbon (Ni/NC-X) composites with core–shell synergistic structure, N-doping and Ni-N bonds were rationally constructed and fabricated by hydrothermal methods and thermal decomposition with carbon reduction. The Ni cores were encapsulated within approximately 15 layers of the graphene shell, leading to the generation of a Ni/NC-X core–shell configuration. The EMWA performances of Ni/NC-X composites could be adjusted by modulating the acrylonitrile (AN) content. Benefiting from the synergistic effects of the core–shell configuration, a hierarchically flower-like architecture and the components (Ni and C), the flower-like Ni/NC-0.80 composite showed remarkable EMWA performance with a reflection loss (RL) of − 40.1 dB and a broad effective absorption bandwidth (EAB) of 10.05 GHz. The result of this study establishes a new strategy to prepare magnetic-carbonaceous composites by carefully designing the microstructure.