Preparation of coral-like palygorskite-dispersed Fe3O4/polyaniline with improved electromagnetic absorption performance

Palygorskite (Pal) was used as frameworks to disperse Fe 3 O 4 and polyaniline (PANI) nanoparticles for the preparation of coral-like Pal-dispersed Fe 3 O 4 /PANI composites with improved electromagnetic absorption performance. The processing was a combination of hydrothermal synthesis and simple mechanical stirring. With increasing content of Pal, specific surface area of the Pal-dispersed Fe 3 O 4 /PANI composites was increased from 21.14 m 2 /g to 29.69 m 2 /g, while the composites exhibitd fluffy coral-like structure due to the cation exchange mechanism and rich silanol (Si-OH) group of Pal. Since various loss mechanisms and improved impedance matching , the Pal-dispersed Fe 3 O 4 /PANI displayed an optimal reflection loss of −62.45 dB and a broad effective absorption bandwidth of 5.05 GHz. Therefore, this work develops an inexpensive framework to disperse nanoparticles for electromagnetic absorption materials , while new application of Pal is proposed.