Cobalt doping-induced strong electromagnetic wave absorption in SiC nanowires

Understanding the electronic structure-property relationship in doped systems is a prerequisite to designing functional materials. We fabricated Co-doped SiC nanowires with different Co contents by a facile carbothermal reduction approach. The nanowires were characterized in terms of microstructure, electronic structure, and electromagnetic (EM) parameters to uncover the effect of Co dopants on enhancing the EM wave absorption ability. Microstructure analysis and density functional theory calculations verified that the doped Co species inhibited the formation of stacking faults and point defects and increased the conductivity of Co-doped SiC nanowires, which indicated the dominant role of conductivity in enhancing dielectric loss. The Co dopants also imparted the Co-doped SiC nanowires with distinct room-temperature ferromagnetic property, which led to enhanced magnetic loss and impedance matching. The induced synergism among SiC nanowires and Co dopants endowed Co-doped SiC nanowires with strong EM wave absorption ability. The minimum reflection loss of Co-doped SiC nanowires reaches −50 dB, and the effective absorption bandwidth is 4.0 GHz with only 1.5 mm sample thickness. Thus, Co-doped SiC nanowires can be used as effective EM wave absorption materials. This study also provided a guideline for designing high-performance EM wave absorbers.