Effect of oxidation on the microwave absorption properties of rare-earth intermetallics La2Fe4Co10B

Microwave absorbers are increasingly being used to enhance shielding performance at higher frequencies. Great effort has been made to develop materials with superior reflection loss (RL), thin thickness, wide bandwidth, and low density to improve their performance in electromagnetic microwave absorption. In this work, the rare-earth intermetallics La2Fe4Co10B fine powders with planar magnetocrystalline anisotropy and high magnetization were prepared using the hydrogenation desorption (HD) technique. By heating the obtained magnetic powders in the air to slowly form an oxide layer on their surfaces, its complex permittivity can be tuned without changing its complex permeability, and its microwave absorption performance can be dramatically enhanced due to the improved impedance matching condition. For the La2Fe4Co10B/paraffin composite, the real part of the complex permittivity at 10 GHz can be reduced from 20.1 to 12.8, decreasing 36.3%. Before the oxidation, the RL of La2Fe4Co10B/paraffin composite is only −14.8 dB at 3.3 GHz under 3.4 mm thickness with an effective absorption bandwidth (EAB) of 0.9 GHz. However, after the 10-hour oxidation, the RL changes to −15.6 dB at 13.4 GHz under 1.4 mm thickness with an EAB of 6.2 GHz. As an efficient and lightweight absorber, La2Fe4Co10B/paraffin composite has potential application value in constructing a new microwave absorber.