Dispersed spherical shell-shaped palygorskite/carbon/polyaniline composites with advanced microwave absorption performances

Palygorskite was coated with a thin layer of carbon by using a hydrothermal process with glucose, in order to form palygorskite/carbon (Pal/C) composites, which were then used as a template to load polyaniline through in-situ polymerization, thus obtaining dispersed spherical shell-shaped palygorskite/carbon/polyaniline (Pal/C/PANI) ternary composites. The Pal/C/PANI composites exhibit promising electromagnetic absorption performances, which can be optimized by adjusting the content of Pal/C. In this case, palygorskite acts as a skeleton and dispersion agent, which effectively prevents the agglomeration of carbon and polyaniline. Due to the improved impedance matching and increased dielectric loss, the Pal/C/PANI composites display an optimal reflection loss of −74 dB at 6.24 GHz, with a maximum effective absorption bandwidth of 4.96 GHz. Such composites could be candidates as high performance microwave absorbers.