Design of Ultrathin Radar Absorbing Structure Using CNF-Barium Ferrite Based Nanocomposites for Stealth Applications

In this work, the ultrathin and broadband radar absorbing material (RAM) using the newly synthesized barium ferrite nanoparticle (BF) and carbon nano fiber (CNF) based epoxy nanocomposites are developed for stealth applications. The CNF-BF based nanocomposite samples in the present situation are synthesized using the specialized ultrasonication method, and their permittivity along with the permeability data are measured in order to extract the reflection loss of these sample in the X-band. It is observed that, on increasing the CNF concentration from 0–3 wt.% by keeping the BF nanofiller at 60 wt.% epoxy, the real and imaginary parts of the permittivity are increasing without significantly affecting the magnetic properties of the resultant nanocomposite. Among all the BF and CNF based nanocomposites, it is observed that the sample with 2 wt.% CNF doping concentration with 60 wt.% BF in the epoxy matrix, the maximum reflection loss of 29.90 dB with 10 dB absorption bandwidth of 2.70 GHz is obtained for 1.5 mm thin sample. Also a detailed comparison in terms of performance of the proposed absorber with similar work reported in literature is carried out indicating its importance as RAM for stealth applications.