Development of Radar Absorbing Nano Crystals under Thermal Irradiation

Abstract

Single phase W-type barium hexaferrite nano crystals of radar absorbing material (RAM) i.e., BaMe2Fe16O27 (Me2+=Fe2+) were synthesized by a modified flux method that combines the controlled chemical co-precipitation process for nucleation and complete uniform growth during in-situ annealing with NaCl flux under vacuum furnace. Uniform structure morphological transformation of nano crystals from spherical to prism faces were noticed after annealing with increasing temperatures from 200 to 1200 oC for 4 h in vacuum. XRD results showed the single phase nanocrystals of BaFe18O27 with increasing crystallanity and size from 10 to 90 nm during annealing. FESEM and TEM were used to investigate the systematic growth processes of various morphologies of nano crystals. The effect of such systematic morphological transformation of nanocrystals was observed in dielectric, dynamic magnetic and refection loss (RL) properties in Kuband (12.4 -18.0 GHz). A significant increment from -15.23 dB to -43.65 dB with wide range of bandwidth in RL loss is noticed due to the symmetric morphological growth of single phase nano crystals of RAM during annealing. This process of crystal growth, morphology evolution and RL enhancement with respect to increasing temperature were also explained in terms of ostwald ripening and quantum size effect.