Microwave absorption properties of lightweight absorber based on Fe50Ni50-coated poly(acrylonitrile) microspheres and reduced graphene oxide composites

• PANS@SMF – RGO epoxy composite was fabricated by a facile method.
• The absorption bandwidth less than −10 dB can reach up to 4.5 GHz with layer thickness of 2.5 mm.
• The density of the composites is in the range of 0.25–0.34 g/cm3 and can be considered as a lightweight microwave absorber.

In this paper, we proposed a facile method to obtain the lightweight composites consisting of surface modified Fe50Ni50-coated poly(acrylonitrile) microspheres (PANS@SMF), reduced graphene oxide (RGO) and epoxy resin. The as-prepared samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), vibrating sample magnetometry (VSM) and vector network analyzer (VNA). Impedance matching condition and electromagnetic wave attenuation characteristic were used for the reflection loss (RL) performance of the composites. Compared with pure PANS@SMF and RGO composites, the −10 dB absorption bandwidth and the minimum RL of the hybrid composites were enhanced. The bandwidth less than −10 dB was almost 4.5 GHz in the range of 10 GHz to 14.5 GHz, with a matching thickness of 2.5 mm. The density of the hybrid composites was in the range of 0.25–0.34 g/cm3. Therefore, the hybrid composite can be considered as a potential lightweight microwave absorber.