Synthesis of flowerlike vanadium diselenide microspheres for efficient electromagnetic wave absorption

The revelation of MoS₂as an efficient electromagnetic wave (EMW) absorbing material has ratcheted up people's attention to other transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs). To date, extensive studies have been conducted on the semiconducting VIB-Group TMDs while research into metallic VB-Group TMDs has been relatively rare. In this work, we successfully fabricated VB-Group VSe₂microspheres through a facile one-step hydrothermal method and used them as EMW absorbers. The flowerlike VSe₂microspheres based on VSe₂nanosheets exhibited a minimum reflection loss of 46.58 dB with an effective absorption bandwidth of 4.86 GHz. The influence of material morphology, microstructure, and dielectric properties on the EMW absorption performance was systematically investigated. The hierarchically layered structure promoted dielectric loss and EMW absorption by means of multiple reflection, interfacial polarization and related relaxation, and enhanced attenuation ability. This work not only demonstrates that VSe₂is potentially a high-efficiency single component EMW absorber, but also provides fresh insights into exploration on the EMW loss mechanisms of the metallic TMD-based absorbing materials.