Preparation and characterization of one-pot PANi/Fe/Fe3O4/Fe2O3 nanocomposite and investigation of its microwave, magnetic and optical performance<bold> </bold>

In this study, a simple, affordable, broadband, and lightweight microwave absorbing nanocomposite was designed by a one-pot method using polyaniline (PANI)/Fe/Fe3O4/Fe2O3 as a guest and polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) as a host. The PANi/Fe/Fe3O4/Fe2O3 nanocomposite was tailored trough complementary radical polymerization and reductive method. X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) patterns confirmed that PANi/Fe/FeFe3O4/Fe2O3 nanostructure was formed. Moreover, PANi/Fe/Fe3O4/Fe2O3 nanocomposite was deeply explored using Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR), vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM), and field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) analysis. According to the diffuse reflection spectroscopy (DRS), the designed nanostructure exhibited a narrow bandgap (1.37 eV) calculated by the Kubelka-Munk theory. The microwave absorbing characteristics were studied using a vector network analyzer (VNA). Based on the obtained results, the maximum reflection loss of PANi/Fe/Fe3O4/Fe2O3/PMMA nanocomposite was 72.61 dB at 10.9 GHz while absorbed > 1.71 GHz more than 30 dB with a thickness of 3 mm. Notably, tailored nanocomposite approximately absorbed all over the x-band frequency from 2.6 to 3.6 mm > 10 dB.