Synthesis, characterization and microwave characteristics of ATP/BaFe12O19/PANI ternary composites

In this paper, we introduced attapulgite (ATP) into the system of ferrite composites for the first time. By sol-gel self-propagating combustion method, attapulgite/barium ferrite (ATP/BaFe12O19) was prepared, and then ternary composites of attapulgite/barium ferrite/polyaniline (ATP/BaFe12O19/PANI) were obtained by in-situ oxidative polymerization of aniline on ATP/BaFe12O19 mixture. The phase composition, morphology and electromagnetic properties of the as-prepared composites were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Transmission election microscope (TEM), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR), vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM) and vector network analyzer (VNA). We found that the ATP/BaFe12O19/PANI composites at a thickness of 2 mm have the minimum reflection loss of  −11.89 dB at 11.28 GHz, besides the effective absorption bandwidth (less than −5 dB) reached 6.39 GHz (from 8.42 GHz to 14.81 GHz).