A novel light but strong SiC foam with hierarchical porous architecture was fabricated by using dough as raw material via carbonization followed by carbothermal reduction with silicon source. A significant synergistic effect is achieved by embedding meso- and nanopores in a microsized porous skeleton, which endows the SiC foam with high-performance electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding, thermal insulation, and mechanical properties. The microsized skeleton withstands high stress. The meso- and nanosized pores enhance multiple reflection of the incident electromagnetic waves and elongate the path of heat transfer. For the hierarchical porous SiC foam with 72.8% porosity, EMI shielding can be higher than 20 dB, and specific EMI effectiveness exceeds 24.8 dB·cm·g at a frequency of 11 GHz at 25-600 °C, which is 3 times higher than that of dense SiC ceramic. The thermal conductivity reaches as low as 0.02 W·m·K, which is comparable to that of aerogel. The compressive strength is as high as 9.8 MPa. Given the chemical and high-temperature stability of SiC, the fabricated SiC foam is a promising candidate for modern aircraft and automobile applications.

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Heterostructured dielectric-dielectric nanowires of SiC core and carbon shell (SiC@C) with high-performance electromagnetic wave absorption were synthesized by combining an interfacial in situ polymer encapsulation and carbonization process. This approach overcomes the shortcomings of previous reported methods to prepare carbon shell that both carbon shell and free carbon particles are formed simultaneously. In our developed approach, the core of SiC nanowires are first positively charged. Then the negative resorcinol-formaldehyde polymers as the carbon source are anchored on SiC nanowires under the attraction of electrostatic force, which well suppresses the nucleation of free carbon particles. The thickness of the carbon shell could be modulated from 4 to 20 nm by simply adjusting the moral ratio of resorcinol to SiC nanowires. The resulting SiC@C core-shell nanostructures without free carbon particles offer synergism among the SiC nanowires and the carbon shells, generating multiple dipolar polarization, surfaced polarization, and associated relaxations, which endow SiC@C hybrid nanowires with a minimum reflection loss (R) value of -50 dB at the frequency of 12 GHz and an effective absorption bandwidth of 8 GHz with R value under -10 dB at the optimized state. Our results demonstrate that SiC@C hybrid nanowires are promising candidates for electromagnetic wave absorption applications.

Lightweight, high-efficiency and low reflection electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding polymer composites are greatly desired for addressing the challenge of ever-increasing electromagnetic pollution. Lightweight layered foam/film PVDF nanocomposites with efficient EMI shielding effectiveness and ultralow reflection power were fabricated by physical foaming. The unique layered foam/film structure was composed of PVDF/SiCnw/MXene (Ti3C2Tx) composite foam as absorption layer and highly conductive PVDF/MWCNT/GnPs composite film as a reflection layer. The foam layer with numerous heterogeneous interfaces developed between the SiC nanowires (SiCnw) and 2D MXene nanosheets imparted superior EM wave attenuation capability. Furthermore, the microcellular structure effectively tuned the impedance matching and prolonged the wave propagating path by internal scattering and multiple reflections. Meanwhile, the highly conductive PVDF/MWCNT/GnPs composite (~ 220 S m−1) exhibited superior reflectivity (R) of 0.95. The tailored structure in the layered foam/film PVDF nanocomposite exhibited an EMI SE of 32.6 dB and a low reflection bandwidth of 4 GHz (R < 0.1) over the Ku-band (12.4 − 18.0 GHz) at a thickness of 1.95 mm. A peak SER of 3.1 × 10–4 dB was obtained which corresponds to only 0.0022% reflection efficiency. In consequence, this study introduces a feasible approach to develop lightweight, high-efficiency EMI shielding materials with ultralow reflection for emerging applications.

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Inspired by the architectural feature of the natural enzyme of carbon monoxide dehydrogenase, cysteamine-capped Au nanoparticles (CA−Au NPs) are investigated with remarkable mass activity for CO 2 reduction. CA− Au NPs exhibit exclusive CO selectivity, low onset overpotential, and a 110-fold enhancement in mass activity compared with ligand-free Au NPs. Electronic structure and in situ spectroscopy analyses indicate that increased activity is due to the electronic effect derived from thiolate anchoring on the surface and chemisorbing CO 2 and intermediates by terminal -NH 2 functional groups. Our study provides the basis for fabricating effective catalysts for CO 2 reduction.