Two-step preparation of fly ash-based composites for microwave absorption

To develop a novel utilization avenue for fly ash (FA), the Co-loaded FA (CoFA) was constructed utilizing FA as raw material to acquire the enhanced microwave absorption (MA) performance. In this study, the CoFA composites were fabricated by a two-step method, including the construction of FA-based ceramic matrix and a subsequent loading of magnetic components. The results of XRD, SEM, and elemental mapping images revealed that Co particles generated from the carbothermal reduction were well dispersed over the interior and surface of matrix. Compared with pure FA, the as-prepared CoFA composites demonstrated the impressive MA performances, which were attributed to the good impedance matching, conduction loss, and interfacial polarization effect between the matrix and Co. When the annealing temperature kept at 700°C, the minimum reflection loss (RL_min) of as-prepared CoFA700 reached up to −40.5 dB and the broad absorption band was measured to be 4.7 GHz with a thickness of 2.0 mm, which was superior to pure FA. Our strategy might provide a new direction to the fabrication of high-efficient MA materials derived from FA.