Band gap, ferromagnetic resonance and strong microwave absorption of BaFe12-2xZnxSnxO19 compounds and enhanced dielectric loss in BaFe12-2xZnxSnxO19/carbon nano tube composites

The forbidden bandgap energy, magnetic properties, natural ferromagnetic resonance and microwave absorption are studied on the Zn2+ and Sn4+ doped BaFe12-2xZnxSnxO19. The forbidden band gap of BaFe12-2xZnxSnxO19 increases with the increasing doping content x from 1.80 eV up to 1.97 eV. The coercive field, the anisotropy field and the magnetocrystalline constant of BaFe12-2xZnxSnxO19 decreases with the increasing doping. The natural ferromagnetic resonance is observed. The high permeability, accompanied with the ferromagnetic resonance, enables strong microwave absorption. BaFe10.4Zn0.8Sn0.8O19 has a wide effective microwave absorption bandwidth (RL≤-10dB) of 6 GHz with the material thickness below 2.5 mm in 11.4–17.4 GHz. The dielectric loss has little contribution to the excellent microwave absorption of BaFe12-2xZnxSnxO19. The BaFe12-2xZnxSnxO19/carbon nanotube (CNT) composites significantly increase the permittivity. The high dielectric loss and the high magnetic loss further improve the microwave absorption. With a very thin thickness of 1.8 mm, BaFe10.4Zn0.8Sn0.8O19/CNT has a bandwidth of 7.1 + GHz of 10.9–––18 + GHz. With the material thickness thinner than 3 mm, BaFe12-2xZnxSnxO19/CNT composites have very broad effective microwave absorption bandwidth of 11.4+, 10.7 and 10.7 GHz, with x  = 0.6, 0.8 and 1.0, respectively. It illustrates that both BaFe10.4Zn0.8Sn0.8O19 and BaFe12-2xZnxSnxO19/CNT composites are very promising microwave absorbers.