Tailored polyaniline/barium strontium titanate/expanded graphite multiphase composite for efficient radar absorption

Abstract

The present paper reports the synthesis of a high-performance microwave absorbing material using a simple, cost-effective and scalable method by encapsulating barium strontium titanate (BST) and expanded graphite (EG) in a polyaniline (PANI) matrix. One of the formulations (higher content of BST) shows shielding effectiveness due to absorption of more than 50 dB (>99.9999% attenuation) with minimum reflection loss (≤1 dB) in the Ku-band (12.4–18 GHz) frequency range. Another formulation (higher content of EG) shows a total shielding effectiveness of more than 81 dB with a reflection loss of 10 dB. In order to probe the relationship between the observed shielding response and the electromagnetic attributes, dielectric and permeability parameters have been calculated from the measured scattering parameters (S₁₁, S₂₂, S₁₂, S₂₁) using the Nicolson–Ross–Weir algorithm. The synthesised formulations were characterized thoroughly using XRD, FTIR, TGA, UV, Raman spectroscopy, SEM and HRTEM.