An investigation of microstructural, magnetic and microwave absorption properties of multi-walled carbon nanotubes/Ni0.5Zn0.5Fe2O4

Muhammad Syazwan Mustaffa; Raba'ah Syahidah Azis; Nor Hapishah Abdullah; Ismayadi Ismail; Idza Riati Ibrahim

doi:10.1038/s41598-019-52233-2

An investigation of microstructural, magnetic and microwave absorption properties of multi-walled carbon nanotubes/Ni_0.5Zn_0.5Fe₂O₄

Sci Rep. 2019 Oct 29;9(1):15523. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-52233-2.

Authors

Muhammad Syazwan Mustaffa¹, Raba'ah Syahidah Azis^{2

3}, Nor Hapishah Abdullah⁴, Ismayadi Ismail³, Idza Riati Ibrahim³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400, Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia. mm_syazwan@upm.edu.my.
² Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400, Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia.
³ Materials Synthesis and Characterization Laboratory, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400, Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia.
⁴ Functional Devices Laboratory, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400, Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia.

Abstract

The enhancement of microwave absorbing properties in nickel zinc ferrite (Ni_0.5Zn_0.5Fe₂O₄) via multiwall carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) growth is studied in this research work. Ni_0.5Zn_0.5Fe₂O₄ was initially synthesized by mechanical alloying followed by sintering at 1200 °C and the microstructural, electromagnetic and microwave characteristics have been scrutinized thoroughly. The sintered powder was then used as a catalyst to grow MWCNT derived from chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method. The sample was mixed with epoxy resin and a hardener for preparation of composites. The composite of multi-walled carbon nanotubes/Ni_0.5Zn_0.5Fe₂O₄ shown a maximum reflection loss (RL) of -19.34 dB at the frequency and bandwidth of 8.46 GHz and 1.24 GHz for an absorber thickness of 3 mm for losses less than -10 dB. This acquired result indicates that multi-walled carbon nanotubes/Ni_0.5Zn_0.5Fe₂O₄ could be used as a microwave absorber application in X-band.