A three-phase PANI/BaFe12O19@Hal heterostructure was designed and fabricated in this paper as efficient lightweight electromagnetic wave absorbing material through the combination of citrate assisted sol-gel self-propagating combustion and in-situ oxidative polymerization of aniline. In addition, the effects of the weight ratio of different PANI to BF@Hal on the microwave absorption properties of the materials were studied. The results show that when the weight ratio of PANI is 40%, the material has the best microwave absorption performance. The frequency bandwidth below similar to 5 dB reached 9.60 GHz and the minimum absorption peak at 11.92 GHz was similar to 14.77 dB. The combination of the PANI and BF@Hal nanosheets take advantage of the interfacial polarization, natural resonance, dielectric polarization and trapping of EM waves by internal reflection in PANI/BaFe12O19@Hal. Taking advantage of the unique microscopic morphology and interface characteristics, halloysite was introduced to improve the microwave absorption performance and enrich the absorbing mechanism of the composite materials. This work may provide a reliable candidate for the synthesis of electromagnetic attenuation materials with fairly good performances. (C) 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.