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Carbonaceous composites with tailored porous architectures and magnetic Fe 3 O 4 components derived from walnut shells were fabricated by a solvothermal method and used as effective microwave absorbers. The porous composites were obtained by two carbonization processes at different temperatures and an etching process using potassium hydroxide. The introduction of a developed porous architecture inside the resulting materials distinctly improved the microwave absorption performance. Moreover, investigations revealed that the Fe 3 O 4 nanoparticles were chemically bonded and uniformly decorated on the porous framework without aggregation. Owing to the combined advantages of the lightweight conductive biochar-like porous framework with a favorable dielectric loss and Fe 3 O 4 nanoparticles with magnetic loss features, these newly fabricated porous carbonaceous composites exhibited excellent microwave absorption performance. A reflection loss (RL) of -51.6 dB was achieved at a frequency of 13.6 GHz. Besides, the effective absorption (below -10 dB) bandwidth reached 5.8 GHz (from 11.9 to 17.7 GHz) at an absorber thickness of only 2 mm. These results indicated that this type of porous Fe 3 O 4 -biochar composite derived from biomass substances and prepared via an easy-to-handle process can be considered as attractive candidates for the design and manufacture of high-efficiency microwave-absorbing materials., Competing Interests: There are no conflicts to declare., (This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry.)