Molecular engineering guided dielectric resonance tuning in derived carbon materials

Dielectric resonance tuning could improve the electromagnetic wave absorption (EMA) properties of materials; however, current strategies for dielectric resonance tuning are scarcely reported. Herein, we proposed a molecular engineering concept to obtain derived carbon materials via controlling the number of aromatic rings and steric/geometric structure of methylene inserted aromatic polymers (MAPs). The derived carbon materials are composed of repeat units, existing analogous dipole polarization, and further creating dielectric resonance loss, making the resultant MAP-derived carbon materials (MAPCs) demonstrate outstanding EMA performance. Particularly, the effective absorption bandwidth of MAPC-6 can reach 7.1 GHz, which is superior to that of state-of-the-art carbon materials. This work demonstrates the EMA ability can be significantly optimized through the molecular engineering structural design concept, paving the way to understand and tune the dielectric resonance in carbon materials, and offering promising EMA application perspectives.