Synthesis of high magnetic moment soft magnetic nanocomposite powders for RF filters and antennas

•Fe60Co40 alloy nanoparticles with an average particle size of 30nm were successfully synthesized in gram scale batches using the modified polyol process.•Fe60Co40 alloy nanoparticles are not available commercially even in gram scale quantities.•The saturation magnetization for the gram scale synthesized Fe60Co40 alloy nanoparticles is in the range of 190–205 emu/g at room temperature.•The as-synthesized nanoparticles were used to fabricate transmission lines on FR4 substrate to perform radio frequency (RF) characterization of the nanoparticles at ISM RF bands of interest (all in GHz range).•The complex permeability extraction of composite Fe60Co40 nanoparticles were performed using perturbation technique applied to microstrip transmission lines by relative measurement of full two port scattering parameter with respect to a baseline FR4 substrate.•The extracted results show attractive characteristics for the fabrication of small size antennas and filters.•This paper clearly shows the pathway from synthesis to device fabrication possibilities of the nanoscale materials. Fe60Co40 alloy nanoparticles with an average particle size of 30nm were successfully synthesized in gram scale batches using the modified polyol process. The X-ray diffraction and microstructure studies clearly show the formation of the alloy nanoparticles. The saturation magnetization for the gram scale synthesized Fe60Co40 alloy nanoparticles is in the range of 190-205 emu/g at room temperature. The as-synthesized nanoparticles were used to fabricate transmission lines on FR4 substrate to perform radio frequency (RF) characterization of the nanoparticles at ISM RF bands of interest (all in GHz range). The complex permeability extraction of composite Fe60Co40 nanoparticles were performed using perturbation technique applied to microstrip transmission lines by relative measurement of full two port scattering parameter with respect to a baseline FR4 substrate. The extracted results show attractive characteristics for small size antennas and filters.