α-MnO2 nanorods-polyaniline (PANI) nanocomposites synthesized by polymer coating and grafting approaches for screening EMI pollution

Abstract

In this work, α-MnO2 nanorods-polyaniline nanocomposites were synthesized using polymer coating and grafting approaches. The synthesized nanocomposites were characterized by XRD, FESEM, EDAX, TEM, TG-DTA and FT-IR techniques. The Electromagnetic properties of prepared samples were measured using vector network analyzer in the 8–18 GHz (X and Ku-Band) frequency region. The α-MnO2-NH2-PANI nanocomposite synthesized by grafting approach showed better electrical conductivity, excellent dielectric loss with superior microwave absorption ability. In comparison with pure MnO2, the microwave absorption characteristics of α-MnO2-NH2-PANI nanocomposite display considerable improvements, with an effective absorption band at 10.8 GHz and 14.5 GHz under −10 dB and minimum reflection loss (RL) of −30.79 dB at 14.5 GHz. The α-MnO2-NH2-PANI sample also showed considerable shielding effectiveness (SE) i.e. −20.85 dB in the 8–18 GHz frequency region. The observed value of RL and SE surpasses the required value for being utilized at a commercial level. These results are surely helpful to explore the microwave absorption study of different combinations of organic/inorganic nanocomposite materials particularly for shielding and microwave absorption applications.