Electromagnetic and absorption properties of carbonyl iron/rubber radar absorbing materials

We measured the effective complex magnetic permeability μ_eff^* and dielectric permittivity ε_eff^* spectra in rubber radar absorbing material (RAM) with various carbonyl iron volume fractions by using the transmission/reflection method with a vector network analyzer. We studied the effects of carbonyl iron content and rubber thickness on the microwave absorption properties in the frequency range of 2.6 to 18 GHz. Our mathematical analysis is based on electromagnetic theory. The results indicate that the effective complex magnetic permeability and dielectric permittivity values of the RAM increase as the carbonyl iron volume fraction increases. For sample thickness of 3.0 mm, an increase in carbonyl iron content reduces the minimum reflection loss from -1.3 to -23.9 dB and shifts the frequency of the minimum reflection loss from 15.5 to 3.5 GHz. For an equal volume fraction of carbonyl iron, the frequency of the minimum reflection loss decreases as the thickness is increased. However, the dip in the reflection loss plot (in decibels) initially decreases to a minimum value before it increases with a further increase in thickness. We determined the value of the reflection loss for the samples by the impedance matching degree (reflection coefficient), which depends on the thickness and composition of the RAM.