Facile synthesis and excellent electromagnetic wave absorption properties of flower-like porous RGO/PANI/Cu2O nanocomposites

Novel porous ternary nanocomposite systems containing reduced graphene oxide (RGO)/polyaniline (PANI)/cuprous oxide (Cu2O) were prepared via one-step in situ redox method. The RGO/PANI/Cu2O nanocomposites present a flower-like structure with an average size of 2.0 mu m in diameter. The morphologies and properties of the products can be controlled by adjusting the molar ratios of aniline to Cu2+. When the molar ratio of aniline to Cu2+ is 1:1, the product exhibits excellent microwave absorption property in the frequency range of 2-18 GHz. It can be seen that the maximum reflection loss (RL) of the ternary composite is up to -52.8 dB at 2.7 GHz with a thickness of only 2 mm, and the absorption bandwidth corresponding to -10 dB (90% of EM wave absorption) is 13.2 GHz. The microwave absorption property of ternary RGO/PANI/Cu2O composite is significantly improved due to its special flower-like porous structure, dielectric loss property and well impedance matching characteristics, which is 8.12 times than that of pure RGO and 5.28 times than that of pure PANI. Therefore, our study paves a new way to prepare the promising lightweight and high-performance composite materials combined with the characteristics of three components for electromagnetic absorption.