EFFECT OF PARTICLE SIZE OF BaFe12O19 ON THE MICROWAVE ABSORPTION CHARACTERISTICS IN X-BAND

Present work deals with the microwave absorption characteristics of BaFe12O19 of interest as radar absorbing material (RAM). There are very few reported works available where particle size has been critically analyzed for absorbing characteristics at microwave frequencies, therefore, in this paper microwave absorption properties of the BaFe12O19 with different particle sizes were investigated. The results showed that the particle size had significant influence on the dielectric and absorption properties of the composites in the 8.2-12.4 GHz frequency range. BaFe12O19 powder of different particle sizes were synthesized by varying the annealing time and it was observed that the real part of permittivity of the composite increases from 5.18 (average value) to 7.50 (average value) and imaginary part increases from an average value of 0.20 to an average value of 2.33, whereas the real part of permeability increases from 0.95 (average value) to 1.11 (average value) and imaginary part of permeability was measured in the range of 0.02 to 0.07. These changes in permittivity and permeability affects microwave absorption application. It is observed that the maximum bandwidth for average particle size of 240 nm is 3.02 GHz and with the increase in average particle size, microwave absorption properties increased.