Radar absorption performance of Fe₃O₄/AC/PANI nanocomposites prepared from natural iron sand

In this work, the Fe₃O₄ nanoparticles from natural iron sand were combined with active carbon (AC) and polyaniline (PANI) to obtain Fe₃O₄/AC/PANI nanocomposites with mass variations of the AC of 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, and 0.5 g. The crystalline phase of Fe₃O₄/AC/PANI nanocomposites formed from Fe₃O₄ with PANI having an amorphous phase. Meanwhile, the crystalline phase of AC was unmatched because of its very small composition. The presence of AC was observed through vibrations from the C-C and COOH functional groups. The existence of PANI was indicated by the vibrations of the benzoic ring and quinonoid bonds. Besides, the presence of Fe₃O₄ was confirmed by the presence of Fe-O functional groups from octahedral and tetrahedral positions. The optical properties of Fe₃O₄/AC/PANI nanocomposites were shown by increasing the energy gap along with decreasing absorption wavelength. Interestingly, increasing AC composition made the absorption bandwidth of the Fe₃O₄/AC/PANI nanocomposites wider, so that the radar absorption also increased marking by the greater reflection loss that reached -15.8 dB. The increase in the radar absorption performance of Fe₃O₄/AC/PANI nanocomposites came from the efficient complementarity between dielectric loss and magnetic loss and interfacial polarization between Fe₃O₄-AC or between Fe₃O₄-PANI.