Facile synthesis of palygorskite/polyaniline/ZnO nanocomposites as strong wideband microwave absorbers

Abstract

Herein, the palygorskite/polyaniline/ZnO (Pal/PANI/ZnO) nanocomposites were synthesized by using facile two-step solution method with palygorskite as a carrier. It was confirmed that the introduction of palygorskite can effectively prevent the free agglomeration of polyaniline shells and ZnO rods. Interestingly, the acquired ternary nanocomposites show excellent microwave absorption properties in multi frequency bands. Specifically, the optimized sample exhibits a minimum reflection loss (RL) value of −57.75 dB at 5.52 GHz in the C band, with an additional RL peak of −47.44 dB at 15.60 GHz at a thickness of merely 1.88 mm in the Ku band. Meanwhile, the effective absorption bandwidth (RL < -10 dB) reaches 6.56 GHz in the range of 11.44–18.00 GHz at a thickness of 2.08 mm. Therefore, our results could contribute to the design of palygorskite based nanocomposites as the high-absorption and strong-bandwidth microwave absorbers.