Hiring in life sciences? Share your open positions with our professional community. Read more Close

Advertisement

Engineering Carbon Nanotube Networks in MOF-Derived Fe@NC Composites for Lightweight and Broadband Electromagnetic Wave Absorption.

Created on 18 Aug 2026

Authors

Zhongjing Shen, Ruiyang Tan, Ping Chen, Xinyu Xu, Shuai Yuan, Xuefeng Wang

Published in

ACS applied materials & interfaces. Aug 17, 2026. Epub Aug 17, 2026.

Abstract

The in situ growth of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) on metal-organic framework (MOF)-derived carbon matrices offers a promising route for lightweight and high-performance electromagnetic wave (EMW) absorbers. However, achieving controllable CNT growth while maintaining balanced dielectric properties and impedance matching remains a major challenge. Herein, Fe-citrate is introduced as an integrated precursor that simultaneously functions as a Fe source, chelating ligand, and carbon feedstock, controlling in situ growth of CNTs without external carbon sources. During pyrolysis, in situ-formed Fe nanoparticles catalyze the formation of high-aspect-ratio CNT networks on N-doped carbon (NC) derived from zeolitic imidazolate framework-L (ZIF-L), a Zn-based MOF. By regulating the Fe-citrate content, the density and morphology of CNTs can be precisely tailored, thereby tuning the dielectric response and impedance matching characteristics of the resulting Fe@NC-CNT composites. Benefiting from the optimized balance between conductive attenuation and impedance matching, the Fe@NC-CNT composites achieve a minimum reflection loss of -60.4 dB at 12.5 wt % and a maximum effective absorption bandwidth of 7.6 GHz at 10 wt %. This work establishes a versatile strategy for engineering CNT networks in MOF-derived materials and provides insights into the structure-electromagnetic property relationship governing broadband microwave absorption.

PMID:
42607153
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 18 Aug 2026.

Read full publication at:
Please sign in to see all details.

Advertisement

Stats

  • Community rating n/a 0 votes
  • Reviewers' rating n/a 0 votes
  • Your rating

1-terrible, 9-excellent. How would you rate this publication? Sign in in to submit your rating.

  • Recommendations n/a n/a positive of 0 vote(s)
  • Views 7
  • Comments 0

Recommended by

  • No recommendations yet.

Post a comment

You need to be signed in to post comments. You can sign in here.

Comments

There are no comments yet.

Advertisement