Synthesis of Cu2O/multi-walled carbon nanotube hybrid material and its microwave absorption performance

In this paper, Cu2O/multi-walled carbon nanotube (Cu2O/MWCNT) hybrid material was successfully synthesized by a precipitation method. The constituent, morphology, structure, interaction, and electromagnetic parameters of the Cu2O/MWCNT hybrid material were tested by XRD, SEM, TEM, XPS, FT-IR, TGA, and vector network analysis. The results show that Cu2O nano-particles are randomly deposited on the MWCNTs, the interaction is a chemical force between Cu atoms belonging to Cu2O nano-particles and C=O associated with MWCNTs, and the hybrid material exhibits outstanding microwave absorption ability. When the thickness of the absorber is 1.5 mm, the optimal reflection loss (RL) of the electromagnetic wave is up to −28.8 dB at 11.9 GHz, and the valid bandwidth (RL ≤ −10 dB) is approximately 2.7 GHz (10.7–13.4 GHz). When the thickness of the absorber is 2.0 mm, the optimal RL of the electromagnetic wave is −40.5 dB at 8.1 GHz. The hybrid material has excellent microwave-absorption properties, likely due to its polarization, conductive network, and special interface structure.