Investigation on microstructures, electronic structures, electromagnetic properties and microwave absorption properties of Fe3Si/PPy composites

Abstract Microstructures, electronic structures, and microwave absorption properties of Fe3Si/PPy composites have been investigated through experiments and first principal method. The calculated results show that Fe3Si/PPy composites are ferromagnets, and the total magnetic moment is 1.87μB. Charge transfer between atoms is conducive to dielectric loss. The Fe3Si/PPy composites were prepared with the one-pot method. The presence of Fe3Si and PPy was confirmed by XRD, FTIR, EDS and TEM. The Fe3Si/PPy composites showed good wave-absorbing ability in the X-band and Ku-band in contrast to pure Fe3Si. The RL value was −13.73 dB at 16.23 GHz in 1.5 mm-thick Fe3Si/PPy composites, indicating that only 10% EM waves are reflected and 90% EM waves were absorbed. The maximum RL value of the 5.0 mm-thick Fe3Si/PPy composites was −33.1 dB at 13.05 GHz. The effective bandwidth was 2.88 GHz. The dielectric loss and magnetic loss characteristics of the Fe3Si/PPy composites greatly contributed to their excellent wave absorption performance.