Enhanced microwave absorption performance of ultra-small Zn-doped Fe-C nanoparticles

Abstract Ultra-small Zn-doped and non-doped Fe-C nanoparticles are synthesized by one-step metal-organic chemical vapour deposition. Zn-doped Fe-C nanoparticles exhibit an optimal minimum reflection loss of −63.6 dB and a broad effective bandwidth of 7.8 GHz at a thickness of 2.0 mm, which is clearly superior over non-doped Fe-C nanoparticles. A comparative study suggests that the enhanced microwave absorption performance of Zn-doped Fe-C nanoparticles should be related to their degraded dielectric loss and enhanced magnetic loss induced by the Zn-doping effect. These results demonstrate that the strategy of doping effect can effectively tune the dielectric and magnetic losses of magnetic metal-C nanoparticles.