Facile fabrication of conductive silver films on carbon fiber fabrics via two components spray deposition technique for electromagnetic interference shielding

Abstract

A facile and low-cost two components spray deposition technique has been developed to fabricate highly conductive silver films on carbon fiber fabrics (CFFs) surface for electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding applications. Microstructures and components of the samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscope (SEM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), respectively. As measured by four-point probe instrument, silver maintains its unique conductivity as a film on CFFs surface. Additionally, the vector network analyzer (VNA) data illustrated that the incident electromagnetic waves were efficiently attenuated by the reflection on the surface of the network structure and then absorbed in the composites, which primarily integrates the high conductivity of silver film. Compared with the pristine CFFs, the EMI shielding effectiveness (SE) of Ag-coated CFFs with 100 spraying passes could reach to 80.82 dB. Therefore, it is expected that this work will open up a convenient and compatible strategy to exploiting fabrics materials with high-performance EMI shielding.