Electric field-induced synthesis of dendritic nanostructured α-Fe for electromagnetic absorption application

In this work, large-scale three-dimensional dendritic alpha-Fe which possesses two different faces with uniform width of about 3.0 mu m and length of about 9.0 mu m was directly synthesized using an electric field-induced and electrochemical reduction method in FeSO4 aqueous solution for the first time. This synthesis method shows great advantages including environment-friendliness, extremely low cost and high efficiency. The specific dendritic structure was induced to grow along three of six < 110 > crystallographically equivalent directions under a symmetrical electric field. The uniform length of the dendritic alpha-Fe is subject to Fe2+ concentration gradient. The investigation of the magnetic properties and electromagnetic absorbability indicates that this kind of dendritic alpha-Fe exhibits both high absorption efficiency with the minimum reflection loss value of -32.3 dB and a broad absorption band up to 12 GHz. The dendritic alpha-Fe could be an extremely promising electromagnetic absorption material.