Nickel Doped Cobalt Ferrite/Poly(Ani-co-Py) Multiphase Nanocomposite for EMI Shielding Application

Nickel substituted cobalt ferrite and their nanocomposites with copolymer of aniline and pyrrole were synthesized by co-precipitation and in situ polymerization techniques respectively. The physicochemical properties of the synthesized composites were characterized through powder X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier-transform infrared spectrometry (FTIR), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), four probe resistivity (FPR), vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM), thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA) and vector network analyzer (VNA). XRD, FTIR, and FE-SEM analysis verified the formation of copolymer nanocomposites with ferrite filler. VSM results confirmed that the composites also have the magnetic properties due to the incorporation of ferrite particles. The TGA analysis revealed the superior stability of the developed composites at high temperature. VNA study demonstrated that the obtained composites possessed excellent shielding performance, reaching up to 29.4 dB in the broad bandwidth of 8.2–12.4 GHz (X-band) with the sample thickness of 2.0 mm. The resulting composite materials could be useful as a high-performing shielding candidate for EMI applications.