Synthesis and enhanced microwave absorption properties: a strongly hydrogenated TiO₂ nanomaterial

Due to its improved physical and chemical performances, a strongly hydrogenated TiO₂ was designed and produced successfully by using a sealing-transfer reduction method at a relatively low temperature (425 °C). The microstructures, electromagnetic and microwave absorbing properties were investigated in detail. Experimental results revealed that: (1) the minimum reflection loss (RL) value of the hydrogenated TiO₂ up to -53.8 dB (99.999 99% of EM wave attenuation) was reached at 11.2 GHz, and the RL values below -20 dB (99%) were obtained in a frequency range of 7.3-16.8 GHz. (2) Compared to pristine TiO₂ and black TiO₂ in other reports, the present hydrogenated TiO₂ exhibited greatly improved microwave absorption performance. Moreover, the mechanism was also discussed. It was demonstrated that the excellent microwave absorption performance of the black TiO₂ arose from the strong dielectric loss, excellent impedance matching and attention loss due to associated relaxation and interfacial polarization. It is expected that the hydrogenated TiO₂ exhibits great potential applications in the area of high performance microwave absorbing materials. In addition, it is believed that the black TiO₂ @ magnetic metals composites will display an excellent microwave absorbing property.