Preparation of porous Fe(2)O(3) nanorods-reduced graphene oxide nanohybrids and their excellent microwave absorption properties

In this paper, α-Fe(2)O(3) nanoparticles (NPs)-reduced graphene oxide (RGO), α-FeOOH nanorods (NRs)-RGO and porous α-Fe(2)O(3) NRs-RGO could be selectively synthesized by hydrothermal method. The investigations indicated that the obtained α-Fe(2)O(3) NPs, α-FeOOH NRs and porous α-Fe(2)O(3) NRs were either attached on the surface of RGO sheets or coated uniformly by the RGO sheets. And the as-prepared nanohybrids exhibited excellent microwave absorption performance, which was proved to be ascribed to the quarter-wavelength matching model. The optimum reflection loss (RL) values for α-Fe(2)O(3) NPs-RGO, α-FeOOH NRs-RGO and porous α-Fe(2)O(3) NRs-RGO were ca. −32.3, −37.4 and −71.4 dB, respectively. Moreover, compared to the obtained α-Fe(2)O(3) NPs-RGO and α-FeOOH NRs-RGO, the as-prepared porous α-Fe(2)O(3) NRs-RGO nanohybrids exhibited enhanced microwave absorption properties because of their special structure and synergetic effect. The possible enhanced microwave absorption mechanisms were discussed in details. Our results confirmed that the geometrical morphology had a great influence on their microwave absorption properties, which provided a promising approach to exploit high performance microwave absorbing materials.