Microwaves absorbing characteristics of metal ferrite/multiwall carbon nanotubes nanocomposites in X-band

The ferrite nanoparticles and ferrite/multiwall carbon nanotubes (Cu0.25Ni0.25Zn0.5Fe2O4/MWCNTs) nanocomposites with different concentrations of MWCNTs as filler are synthesized using co-precipitation and solution-mixing techniques. In brief, the MWCNTs were first purified for their quick dispersion and then acid functionalized to introduce carboxylic groups for effectively attaching ferrite nanoparticles and epoxy. These nanocomposites were examined for permittivity and permeability which revealed a strong dependency on filler concentration. In addition, we explored the microwave absorbing behavior of nanocomposites using network analyzer from 8.2 to 12.2 GHz frequency range. The reflection loss (RL) was calculated from complex permittivity and permeability data and maximum RL of −37.7 dB at 10.2 GHz with a sample thickness of 2.5 mm and bandwidth of 0.53 dB. The excellent microwave absorption with wide bandwidth is attributed to interfacial electric polarization, electromagnetic impedance matching, and multiple scattering network structure of Cu0.25Ni0.25Zn0.5Fe2O4/MWCNTs nanocomposites. This work indicates that the Cu0.25Ni0.25Zn0.5Fe2O4/0.16%-MWCNTs could be a promising microwave absorption material for application in X-band.