Electromagnetic wave absorbing characteristics of carbon black cement-based composites

Electrical resistivity, compressive strength, and the electromagnetic absorbing effectiveness of carbon black (CB) cement-based composites (CBCC) with different contents of high-structure CB were studied in this paper. The results indicate that the resistivity of CBCC versus the concentration of CB curves has typical features of percolation phenomena: CBCC in the percolation threshold zone contains 0.36–1.34 vol.% of CB. Thus, the conductive network can be formed in CBCC by using small amount of high-structure CB. Compressive strength of CBCC decreases with CB content increasing. Especially, compressive strength decreases substantially when CB content is more than 3.0 wt.%. CBCC exhibits good performance of absorbing electromagnetic waves in the frequency range of 8–26.5 GHz. For CBCC containing 2.5 wt.% of CB, the minimum reflectivity reaches −20.30 dB. The frequency bandwidth in which the reflectivity is less than −10 dB was from 14.9 GHz to 26.5 GHz. The filling of CB has improved the dielectric constant and the loss factor of the cement material remarkably. The loss factor of CBCC increases with the CB content increasing.