Flexible and conductive meta-aramid fiber paper with high thermal and chemical stability for electromagnetic interference shielding

Abstract

How to function properly under extreme working conditions is a key challenge for flexible electronic devices because their performance is often susceptible to environmental conditions. Herein, we demonstrated the fabrication, evaluation, and application of a flexible and highly conductive meta-aramid fiber paper (MAFP) by combining oxygen plasma treatment and electroless silver plating. The plasma treatment etched the MAFP surface and introduced large amounts of oxygen-containing groups which led to the formation of continuous silver coating and high interface binding between MAFP and Ag nanoparticles. The results showed that the silver-coated MAFP had an electrical resistance as low as 0.152 Ω/sq and exhibited excellent temperature, mechanical and chemical stability. Finally, these properties of silver-coated MAFP were exploited for its use as electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding. Experimental results revealed that the EMI shielding effectiveness (SE) of the silver-coated MAFP reached as high as 95.47 dB and a specific EMI SE of 530.38 dB·mm−1. These results have clearly demonstrated that MAFP can become highly electrically conductive after simple plasma treatment and silver coating while keeping its excellent thermal and chemical stability and therefore holds great promise for the development of new kinds of all-weather flexible electronic devices.