A novel approach for the synthesis of lanthanum aluminate nanoparticles using thermal shock assisted solid-state method as a microwave absorber layer

Abstract

In this research, lanthanum aluminate (LaAlO3) nanoparticles were synthesized by a solid-state reaction followed by the thermal shock process; this was done by applying high purity materials for microwave absorption applications. The fabricated nanoparticles were analyzed using different techniques such as Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray diffraction (XRD) method and field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM). The results indicated that the fabricated LaAlO3 particles formed nanocrystallites with the average grain size of 90 nm and an appropriate morphology with the related functional groups. The rhombohedral structure of the synthesized sample was identified by the X-ray diffractogram. Also, microwave absorber samples containing paraffin and lanthanum aluminate as the wave absorber parts were prepared. The electromagnetic parameters were measured by utilizing a vector network analyzer (VNA) in the frequency range of 8.2–12.4 GHz. The results related to electromagnetic absorbability indicated that the binary samples showed great microwave absorption qualities. The RL values of paraffin-based nano-LAO samples was strongly affected by the amount of LAO segments and the thickness of the samples. The sample with 10% LaAlO3 particles and the thickness of 1 mm showed a minimum reflection loss of −10.37 dB at 10.55 GHz. The advanced and innovative strategy used in the present study can be practically applied to obtain binary samples based on paraffin and dielectric particles to serve as microwave absorber layers.