Facile synthesis of palygorskite/polyaniline/ZnO nanocomposites as strong wideband microwave absorbers

Abstract Herein, the palygorskite/polyaniline/ZnO (Pal/PANI/ZnO) nanocomposites were synthesized by using facile two-step solution method with palygorskite as a carrier. It was confirmed that the introduction of palygorskite can effectively prevent the free agglomeration of polyaniline shells and ZnO rods. Interestingly, the acquired ternary nanocomposites show excellent microwave absorption properties in multi frequency bands. Specifically, the optimized sample exhibits a minimum reflection loss (RL) value of −57.75 dB at 5.52 GHz in the C band, with an additional RL peak of −47.44 dB at 15.60 GHz at a thickness of merely 1.88 mm in the Ku band. Meanwhile, the effective absorption bandwidth (RL