Enhanced microwave absorption properties of flake-shaped FeCo/BaFe12O19 composites

In this work, flake-shaped FeCo/BaFe12O19 composites were successfully prepared via a facile two-step process involving ball milling and sol-gel treatment. Compared with commonly used FeCo alloys, FeCo/BaFe12O19 composite material can achieve remarkable microwave absorption performance, and this is largely because of the flake-shaped structure and dielectric relaxation processes. Furthermore, changing mass fractions of BaFe12O19 enable flexible control of applicable frequency ranges of FeCo/BaFe12O19 composites. It was found that when the BaFe12O19 mass fraction is as high as 20%, minimum reflection loss can reach -51.22 dB with effective loss of < ?10 dB and effective bandwidth of 6.24 GHz even at a thin thickness of 1.45 mm. It is highly believed that these significant achievements will arouse interest from researchers for further practical exploration of microwave absorbers.