Synthesis and Characterization of Ternary Polyaniline/Barium Ferrite/Reduced Graphene Oxide Composite as Microwave-Absorbing Material

A microwave-absorbing composite with polyaniline (PANI), barium ferrite (BaFe12O19) and reduced graphene oxide (rGO) by co-precipitation and in situ polymerization is presented, consisting of three different microwave-absorbing materials. The structure characterization, the microstructure of the fabricated composites and their related thermal and microwave absorption properties have been investigated. The thermogravimetric analysis and vector network analyzer measurements indicated that both the thermal stabilities and the microwave-absorption properties of this ternary composite were significantly enhanced due to the synergistic effects of PANI, BaFe12O19 and rGO. The minimum reflection loss of PANI/BaFe12O19/rGO was -22.05dB at 8.6GHz, and the effective microwave-absorption bandwidth for reflection loss below -10dB was 0.9GHz from 8.2GHz to 9.1GHz with the thickness of 2.6mm. The improved microwave-absorption properties could be mainly due to the impedance matching by integration of dielectric loss and magnetic loss, and interfacial polarization between the three components. The remarkable microwave-absorption properties suggests its promising application for microwave absorption.