Three-dimensional polyaniline/cerium oxide composite aerogel with enhanced microwave absorption properties

In order to develop microwave absorbing materials with strong absorption capacity, wide bandwidth and light weight, three-dimensional (3D) PANI/CeO 2 composite aerogel was prepared by in-situ synthesis method in this work. The CeO 2 nanorods are observed to be interlinked with PANI aerogel to form a porous nanofiber structure. The PANI/CeO 2 composite aerogel exhibits excellent absorption performance with an absorption peak of − 53.68 dB under a moderate thickness of 2.5 mm, and the effective absorption bandwidth (EAB) achieves 4.44 GHz. The excellent microwave absorption performance of PANI/CeO 2 composite aerogel was ascribed to the interfacial polarization relaxation and space charge polarization by virtue of the 3D conductive network. Furthermore, the oxygen vacancy defects arising from the CeO 2 nanostructure also contribute greatly to the microwave absorption.