Facile chemical synthesis of amorphous FeB alloy nanoparticles and their superior electromagnetic wave absorption performance

Abstract

Currently, the magnetic metal based electromagnetic wave absorber have attracted extensively interest. However, how to control the high conductivity of magnetic metals and achieve good impedance matching of electromagnetic absorbing materials made by them have become a big problem at present. Herein, amorphous FeB nanoparticles were rationally synthesized by a wet method, which involves a simple three-step solution reaction. The obtained products were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscope (SEM), transmission electron microscope (TEM), and vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM). Benefiting from their amorphous structure, the resulting FeB nanoparticles show good magnetic properties, dielectric losses and proper impedance matching, thus good microwave attenuation ability can be achieved in the low frequency range. The maximum reflection loss is −15 dB at 3.5 GHz with a thickness of 8 mm which can be mainly attributed to its excellent impedance matching in the frequency range of 2.5–4.5 GHz. These amorphous FeB alloy nanoparticles are expected to be promising candidates for efficient microwave absorbers in the S band.