Ternary synergistic structure of Co-TiN@CNTs enables efficient electromagnetic wave absorption through coupling of multi-loss mechanisms

Abstract The integration of reflection networks into microwave-absorbing (MA) fillers remains a major challenge. While carbon nanotubes (CNTs) possess high conductivity and a unique structure ideal for this purpose, their poor dispersion and difficult alignment limit progress. This work employs a one-step synergistic strategy to enable the concurrent crystallization of titanium nitride (TiN), catalytic activation of cobalt ions (Co2+), and growth of micrometer-long CNTs, through precise tailoring of the reaction ratio. The generated micron-scale bushy CNTs are used to form a reflective network and produce high dielectric loss. The material exhibits exceptional MA performance, with a minimum reflection loss (RLmin) of −58.17 dB at 5.50 GHz and an ultra-wide effective absorption bandwidth (EAB) of 5.31 GHz under mass doping of 5%. This work provides new ideas for the construction of multi-reflection networks.