Abstract
While wood substances that contain water have shown a dielectric effect, they have never been directly proposed as a microwave absorption material to reduce artificial electromagnetic pollution. In this study, the microwave absorption efficiency of wood that contains water was investigated based on its dielectric properties in the microwave frequency range to optimize the parameters of wood unit cells, including the orientation, moisture content (MC) and thickness. Subsequently, inspired by the design concept of electromagnetic metamaterials, single-layer wood unit cells containing moisture were directly integrated into double epoxy resin layers. This procedure formed a natural wood-based metamaterial (NWM) with a simple periodic Sandwich structure without the need for further chemical modification and/or high energy consuming processes. Such design strategies allowed the NWMs to overcome the limitation of inherent dielectric properties of natural wood and present significantly enhanced microwave absorption performance, as well as different absorption behavior. NWMs at a MC ≤ 70% displayed a selective absorption mode, while NWMs at MC ≥ 85% showed a broadband absorption mode. Both absorption modes could achieve the peak absorptivity > 98%. Particularly, the NWM in the broadband absorption mode possessed an effective absorption (absorptivity > 90%) bandwidth of 9.04 GHz, which was 7.6 times that of natural wood (1.19 GHz). The NWMs performed well when irradiated by microwaves with different angles and directions. Also, the thickness of NWMs was only 7 mm, allowing easy incorporation of the materials in engineering designs. The use of sustainable materials, impressive performance, high stability, practical thickness, and the facile and cost-effective production technique demonstrated NWMs with great potential in designing green buildings.
Funding source: National Key Research and Development Program of China
Award Identifier / Grant number: 2017YFD0600202
Funding source: Forestry Science and Technology Research Project of National Forestry and Grassland Administration of China
Award Identifier / Grant number: 2017-03
Funding source: USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, McIntire Stennis project
Award Identifier / Grant number: 1024726
Acknowledgements
We thank Xiao Zhang, College of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering, Hunan University for providing the simulation program of microwave absorption performance.
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Author contributions: The study was conceived and designed by Peng Quan, Yuan Liu, Xianjun Li and Xinfeng Xie. Peng Quan, Chun Long and Jun Zhou prepared the samples and conducted experiments, except for the tests on dielectric properties which were conducted by Xia He. The manuscript was drafted by Peng Quan and revised by Xinfeng Xie and David DeVallance. All authors discussed the results.
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Research funding: This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2017YFD0600202), Forestry Science and Technology Research Project of National Forestry and Grassland Administration of China (2017-03). This work was also partially supported by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, McIntire Stennis project 1024726.
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Conflict of interest statement: The authors declare no conflicts of interest regarding this article.
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Supplementary Material
The online version of this article offers supplementary material (https://doi.org/10.1515/hf-2021-0088).
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