Microwave Absorption Performance of Graphene Nanoplatelets Dispersed SiC

Abstract

Microwave absorption performance of graphene nanoplatelets based SiC composites have been studied in the present work. Graphene nanoplatelets were dispersed at varying weight fractions viz. 0.5, 1, 2, 2.5 and 3 wt.% in SiC using ultrasonication and ball milling methods. Microwave attenuation behaviour of the prepared composites have been observed in the 2-18 GHz range. The results reflect that dispersion of graphene in SiC proves to be very instrumental in attenuating the incident microwave signals translating into enhanced absorption. The enhancement in the microwave absorption performance is due to the presence of conductive graphene nanoplatelets which is very instrumental in promoting conduction and polarisation losses in the composite translating into enhanced absorption. For 3 wt.% graphene nanoplatelets dispersion in SiC, the value of reflection loss (RL) was obtained as -38.67 dB at 14.67 GHz frequency for 2.2 mm thickness with the corresponding bandwidth of 5 GHz.