“…Recently, Sr 3 Co 2 ZnFe 24 O 41 was reported to have a reflection loss between − 10 and − 35 dB over the 8-12.5 GHz range [22], the best samples being 2.6 mm thick. A stable method with precise chemical composition is required for synthesising Z-type hexaferrites, typical techniques including sol-gel, sol-gel auto-combustion, solid-state reactions and chemical co-precipitation [9,21,[23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30]. A sol-gel auto-combustion process is considered to be one of the best methods, as the metal ions chelation eliminates the elemental homogeneities present in the gels that play a significant part in producing the desired single phase [31,32].…”