To develop high-performance magnetic polymer composites, we reported a facial mussel-inspired way to functionalize Fe3O4 microspheres with dopamine (DA) and KH550, followed by compounding with poly (arylene ether nitrile) (PEN), to prepare functional nanocomposite films. Such mussel inspired co-modification of Fe3O4 was characterized and confirmed by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), X-ray diffraction (XRD), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Therefore, the outstanding properties of the functionalize Fe3O4/polymer composites were obtained. With the addition of 15 wt% functionalized Fe3O4, the saturation magnetization (Ms) and dielectric permittivity of the PEN composites were increased to 12.49 emu/g and 14.3 (250 Hz), respectively, while the low dielectric loss was maintained. In addition, even the high loading content of Fe3O4 was incorporated, the functional PEN composites still exhibited high mechanical properties and thermal stability, including the significant improvement in glass transition temperature, and the same level of the tensile strength compared with neat PEN. Our work revealed that magnetic and dielectric PEN composites materials along with high comprehensive properties may be potentially used in the electromagnetic fields. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.