A facile synthesis of bare biomass derived holey carbon absorbent for microwave absorption

Lightweight, inexpensiveness, easy synthesis, associated with high and broadband absorption are the intensive pursuit for advanced microwave absorbents. Herein, we employ a facile preparation to create holey structures on the wasted biomass-derived carbon materials by air-calcination. All of the carbon absorbents derived from wasted corn cobs, bagasse and grapefruit peels exhibit controlled holey structures on their surfaces, demonstrating the universality of this strategy. The obtained metal-free products are fabricated from bare wasted biomass, without any additional reagents addition. Benefiting from the holey structure generation, more incident microwaves can be consumed due to the increased surface areas and polarization centers for the microwave radiation. The performance measurements suggest the achieved sample could reach a minimum reflection loss value of −47.0 dB at 14.1 GHz and an effective absorption bandwidth (lower than −10 dB) of 5.5 GHz. It is anticipated that this facile holey generation method can be extended to more wasted biomass-derived carbon materials for more sustainable applications.