Dispersed spherical shell-shaped palygorskite/carbon/polyaniline composites with advanced microwave absorption performances

Palygorskite was coated with a thin layer of carbon by using a hydrothermal process with glucose, in order to form palygorskite/carbon (Pal/C) composites, which were then used as a template to load polyaniline through in-situ polymerization, thus obtaining dispersed spherical shell-shaped palygorskite/carbon/polyaniline (Pal/C/ PANI) ternary composites. The Pal/C/PANI composites exhibit promising electromagnetic absorption performances, which can be optimized by adjusting the content of Pal/C. In this case, palygorskite acts as a skeleton and dispersion agent, which effectively prevents the agglomeration of carbon and polyaniline. Due to the improved impedance matching and increased dielectric loss, the Pal/C/PANI composites display an optimal reflec-tion loss of -74 dB at 6.24 GHz, with a maximum effective absorption bandwidth of 4.96 GHz. Such composites could be candidates as high performance microwave absorbers. (c) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

In this study, palygorskite was modified to prepare Pal/C/PANI ternary composites, which exhibit promising electromagnetic absorption performances with potential applications in microwave absorption.