Preparation of nickel doped mesoporous carbon for enhanced microwave absorption performance

•Single layer multi-component absorbers with magnetodielectric fillers were synthesized.•Polypyrrole@Ni doped mesoporous carbon was successfully prepared.•The sample with 45 wt% loading exhibits optimal RL characteristics.•RLmin of the sample is −13.42 dB with a broad effective bandwidth of 1.18 GHz at 3 mm.•Multiple attenuation of this customized heterogeneous structures enhanced microwave absorption performance.