Beyond the inaugural synthesis of multi-layered Ti₃C₂T_xby etching Ti₃AlC₂with hydrofluoric acid (HF), novel routes with a myriad of reducing agents, etchants and intercalants have since been explored and have added many new members to the two-dimensional (2D) material constellation.

In this study, novel Co-doped Ni–Zn ferrite/graphene nanocomposites were synthesized, which exhibited tunable microwave absorption capability, with dual-region absorption performance that can be well attributed to the synergistic effect of both dielectric and magnetic losses.

This review aims to summarise the progress in some materials and structures for electromagnetic applications, such as microwave absorption, electric shielding and antenna designs, which have been developed in recent years. Composites with spherical powders for microwave absorption focus mainly on those based on ferrites (especially hexagonal), carbonyl iron and related alloys and various newly emerged nanosized materials. Composites with long conductive fibres as fillers will be summarised, with speical attentions to prediction, measurment and evaluation of their performances. Metamaterials include structures for microwave absorbing applications, tunable materials or structures with reflection or transmission coefficients that are tunable by external magnetic or electric fields, and specially designed structures for microwave absorbing applications, with thickness much smaller than that of conventional composite materials and performances that can be optimised by the physical properties of substrates, and new metamaterials constructed with ferrite cores wound by metallic wire coils that exhibited unique magnetic properties, with extremely high real and imaginary permeability, which are adjustable or tunable by varying their configurations. Magnetodielectric materials, with matching permeability and permittivity, together with sufficiently low magnetic and dielectric loss tangents, with potential applications in antenna miniaturisation, will be discussed.