Influence of carbon nanotubes on structural, magnetic and electromagnetic characteristics of MnMgTiZr substituted barium hexaferrite nanoparticles

• Ba-hexaferrite/CNTs nanocomposites were fabricated by a co-precipitation technique.
• With adding CNTs, saturation magnetization and coercivity of ferrite are decreased.
• Adding CNTs leads to improve the microwave characteristics of ferrite nanoparticles.
• The proposed nanocomposite can be used as an microwave absorption material.

In this research work, magnetic nanocomposites of multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) decorated with substituted barium hexaferrite nanoparticles with composition of BaFe12-x(MnMgTiZr)x/4O19 (x = 0–2.5 in a step of x = 0.5) have been synthesized by a co-precipitation technique. The structural, magnetic and microwave absorption properties of samples were investigated by X-ray diffractometer (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), field emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM), vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM) and vector network analyzer (VNA). The XRD and FTIR results indicated that the nanocomposites were synthesized successfully. FESEM micrographs demonstrated that the ferrite nanoparticles were attached to the external surfaces of the carbon nanotubes. The results of hysteresis loops revealed that with adding MWCNTs to the ferrite nanoparticles, the saturation magnetization and coercivity of samples are decreased. The vector network analysis results showed that the highest value of reflection loss of nanocomposite was −42.91 dB at 16.77 GHz with an absorption bandwidth of more than of 4 GHz. The obtained results reflected that the proposed nanocomposites could be introduced as electromagnetic wave absorption materials for microwave device applications.