Preparation of coral-like palygorskite-dispersed Fe3O4/polyaniline with improved electromagnetic absorption performance

Palygorskite (Pal) was used as frameworks to disperse Fe3O4 and polyaniline (PANI) nanoparticles for the preparation of coral-like Pal-dispersed Fe3O4/PANI composites with improved electromagnetic absorption performance. The processing was a combination of hydrothermal synthesis and simple mechanical stirring. With increasing content of Pal, specific surface area of the Pal-dispersed Fe3O4/PANI composites was increased from 21.14 m2/g to 29.69 m2/g, while the composites exhibitd fluffy coral-like structure due to the cation exchange mechanism and rich silanol (Si-OH) group of Pal. Since various loss mechanisms and improved impedance matching, the Pal-dispersed Fe3O4/PANI displayed an optimal reflection loss of −62.45 dB and a broad effective absorption bandwidth of 5.05 GHz. Therefore, this work develops an inexpensive framework to disperse nanoparticles for electromagnetic absorption materials, while new application of Pal is proposed. [Display omitted] •Pal was developed as a framework to disperse Fe3O4 and PANI nanoparticles.•Pal-dispersed Fe3O4/PANI exhibits a fluffy coral-like structure.•The RLmin reaches −62.45 dB, with a broad bandwidth of 5.05 GHz.•A new framework to disperse nanocomposites has been explored.