A comparative study of spinel ferrites/PANI composites for high-frequency applications

The electrical and networking industries are increasingly reliant on high-frequency ferrite nanocomposites, which are produced using ferrite and a polyaniline binder. In the present study, polyaniline is prepared by in-situ, while the ferrite is synthesized by adopting sol-gel process. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis showed that all the samples (except PANI) possessed spinel structure. When spinel ferrite is blended with the polymer matrix, the crystallite size increased from 19 nm to 61 nm. Combining polyaniline with ferrites leads to a decreasing trend in the dielectric parameters (ε‘, ε“). Hysteresis loop analysis was conducted to evaluate the materials’ ferromagnetic properties. The saturation magnetization (Ms), remanent magnetization (Mr), and coercivity (Hc) all increased as the concentration of ferrite has been increased. The direct current (dc) resistivity and activation energy of a sample containing ferrites and polyaniline also increased. These all parameters suggested that FP-4 may be suitable for high-frequency applications.