TY - JOUR
T1 - Lightweight epsilon-near-zero aerogel at radio frequency with water evaporation performance
AU - Wu, Haikun
AU - Zhong, Jing
AU - Long, Yunchen
AU - Zhao, Minhui
AU - Zhang, Zheng
AU - Yin, Rui
AU - Song, Juan
AU - Xie, Peng
AU - Hou, Qing
AU - Leung, Ken Cham Fai
AU - Fan, Runhua
AU - Sun, Kai
N1 - The authors acknowledge the help from Shanghai Maritime University.
This research study was supported by the Talent Introduction Project of Shandong First Medical University (YS24-0000855).
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024.
PY - 2025/2
Y1 - 2025/2
N2 - Epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) materials, due to their unique physical properties, exhibit significant applications in the fields of perfect absorption, high-order harmonics, etc., and have achieved breakthroughs in performance when combined with a variety of electronic devices. Here, lightweight radio frequency ENZ aerogel is designed for the first time, via fabricating polyurethane/high-entropy alloy@carbon (PU/HEA@C) aerogel through entropy engineering strategy, which is an important step in the integration with radio frequency electronic devices. In addition, PU/Cu@C and PU/CoNiCu@C aerogels are also prepared, and their dielectric properties are investigated. With the increase of entropy, the plasma frequency of the aerogel gradually decreases, and the ENZ performance at 24 MHz is achieved in PU/HEA@C aerogel. It is proved by theoretical calculation that with the increase of entropy, the band structure of the alloy becomes flatter, so the non-parabolicity is enhanced, indicating that the effective electron mass is increased, thereby resulting in the reduced plasma frequency of PU/HEA@C aerogel to radio frequency. Moreover, PU/HEA@C aerogel shows excellent water evaporation performance of 3.21 kg·m−2·h−1 under 1 sun irradiation, due to enhanced d-d interband transitions in HEA. This work provides new theoretical guidance for the realization of lightweight and multi-functional aerogels with ENZ performance.
AB - Epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) materials, due to their unique physical properties, exhibit significant applications in the fields of perfect absorption, high-order harmonics, etc., and have achieved breakthroughs in performance when combined with a variety of electronic devices. Here, lightweight radio frequency ENZ aerogel is designed for the first time, via fabricating polyurethane/high-entropy alloy@carbon (PU/HEA@C) aerogel through entropy engineering strategy, which is an important step in the integration with radio frequency electronic devices. In addition, PU/Cu@C and PU/CoNiCu@C aerogels are also prepared, and their dielectric properties are investigated. With the increase of entropy, the plasma frequency of the aerogel gradually decreases, and the ENZ performance at 24 MHz is achieved in PU/HEA@C aerogel. It is proved by theoretical calculation that with the increase of entropy, the band structure of the alloy becomes flatter, so the non-parabolicity is enhanced, indicating that the effective electron mass is increased, thereby resulting in the reduced plasma frequency of PU/HEA@C aerogel to radio frequency. Moreover, PU/HEA@C aerogel shows excellent water evaporation performance of 3.21 kg·m−2·h−1 under 1 sun irradiation, due to enhanced d-d interband transitions in HEA. This work provides new theoretical guidance for the realization of lightweight and multi-functional aerogels with ENZ performance.
KW - Aerogels
KW - Epsilon-near-zero
KW - High-entropy alloys
KW - Negative permittivity
KW - Radio frequency
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85211687987&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42114-024-01126-8
U2 - 10.1007/s42114-024-01126-8
DO - 10.1007/s42114-024-01126-8
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:85211687987
SN - 2522-0128
VL - 8
JO - Advanced Composites and Hybrid Materials
JF - Advanced Composites and Hybrid Materials
M1 - 39
ER -
