One-step preparation of sea urchin-like conducting polypyrrole-modified porous carbonyl iron powders with excellent microwave absorption properties.

• Conductive polypyrrole modified porous carbonyl iron powder was synthesized by one step method. • Polypyrrole modified porous carbonyl iron powder composites have excellent microwave absorption properties. • The mechanism of polypyrrole modified porous carbonyl iron powder composite was discussed in detail. Carbonyl iron powder (CIP) is a common microwave absorber frequently utilized to prepare microwave-absorbing materials. However, it exhibits only magnetic loss and no dielectric loss, which inevitably affects its wave-absorbing performance. Here, porous carbonyl iron powder (p-CIP) modified with conductive polypyrrole (PPy) was successfully prepared by one-step chemical etching and in-situ polymerization and then utilized to fabricate epoxy composites with high microwave absorption intensity. The scanning electron microscopy images revealed that conductive PPy was encapsulated on the surface of p-CIP. The reflection loss of the P-200 sample is −41.2 dB at 2.2 mm thickness. Reduction of the sample thickness to 1.8 mm resulted in a still acceptable reflection loss of −35.5 dB. Moreover, the effective absorption bandwidth widened to approximately 6.75 GHz (10.55–17.3 GHz). This provides a valuable approach for the development of microwave-absorbing materials with high absorption capacity. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]