Electrospun generation of Ti3C2Tx MXene@graphene oxide hybrid aerogel microspheres for tunable high-performance microwave absorption

•Synthesized a new kind of Ti3C2Tx MXene@GO hybrid aerogel microspheres.•RLmin value of −49.1 dB at 1.2 mm with loading of 10 wt% was achieved.•The hybrid aerogel exhibited excellent attenuating ability in S band.•Multiple attenuation mechanisms enhanced microwave response. Constructing different 2D nano-materials into hybrids is an effective way to fabricate high-performance microwave absorbing (MA) materials. The formed heterointerfaces offers new loss mechanisms to make up the shortages of sole material in attenuating electromagnetic energy. For practical utilizations, microwave absorbers perform at low-frequency band with light-weight and thinness are more desirable. Here, hybrids aerogel microspheres constructed from graphene oxide (GO) and Ti3C2Tx MXene are manufactured by rapid freezing assisted electrostatic-spinning. Combined with the disparities of conductivity between Ti3C2Tx MXene and GO, and the newly generated heterointerfaces and abundant surface groups, the Ti3C2Tx MXene@GO hybrid aerogel microspheres (M@GAMS) exhibit optimized impedance matching and improved MA performance. Besides, the unique aerogel structure not only offers light weight merit for this absorber but also elongates the attenuating paths when electromagnetic waves inject in. With a rather low filler loading of 10.0 wt% and a thickness of 1.2 mm, the optimized M@GAMS exhibit reflection loss (RL) of −49.1 dB at 14.2 GHz. More importantly, the M@GAMS present effective MA at S-band, and the RL reaches −38.3 dB at 2.1 GHz with a thickness of 5.0 mm. We believe the M@GAMS provides new opportunities for designing efficient MA absorbers, especially for the low-frequency.