Synthesis of NiCo-LDH/MXene hybrids with abundant heterojunction surfaces as a lightweight electromagnetic wave absorber

In this research, a flower-like nickel/cobalt layered double hydroxide (NiCo-LDH) was synthesized and mixed with flaky MXene to obtain a series of NiCo-LDH/MXene hybrids. The NiCo-LDH/MXene hybrids with excellent electromagnetic wave (EMW) absorption performance were obtained by adjusting the load of MXene in the mixture. For a NiCo-LDH/MXene hybrid, its excellent EMW performance comes from the synergistic effect of dielectric loss and magnetic loss as well as the excellent attenuation ability and impedance matching characteristics of the material. The results showed that only with a thickness of 2.18 mm at 12.0 GHz, a minimum reflection loss (RLmin) of −64.24 dB was obtained when the MXene content is 75 wt%. For the same sample, a maximum effective absorption bandwidth (EAB, RL <−10 dB) of 4.48 GHz (11.04 ~15.52 GHz) was obtained only with a thickness of 2.00 mm. This research proved the effect of the structure and composition of EMW absorber on its performance, and developed ideas for the design and development of high-performance EMW absorption materials.