Tailoring Light Weight Polypyrrole Aerogel Towards Improved Reflection Loss With High Efficiency and Wide Band Absorption

ABSTRACT Conducting polymer aerogels recently found usage in electromagnetic protection in terms of their conductivity, as well as a lightweight, anticorrosive, porous structure. In this paper, conducting polypyrrole aerogels were prepared by the oxidation of pyrrole with iron (III) chloride and efforts to directly vary the dielectric properties of aerogels have been made to promote efficient electromagnetic wave attenuation and widen the absorption bandwidth. It is demonstrated that the supercritical drying and protonation of polypyrrole aerogel contribute to broadening effective absorption bandwidth, covering 7.2 GHz with a thickness of 2.7 mm under a low filler loading of 7.5 wt%. A minimum reflection loss of −45 dB can be reached at the thickness of 2.5 mm for the binary polymer aerogel. The findings of this study provide valuable insights into available modulation strategies to leverage the potential electromagnetic absorption performance of conducting aerogel.