Recent rapid development of electronic devices such as TV, OA instruments, computers, etc., has given rise to electromagnetic interference (EMI) because almost all housings of these devices are made of plastics which are transparent to electromagnetic interference. In order to shield EMI, technical approaches have been considered extensively to provide electrically conductive housing, i.e., coating, metallizing and compounding of conductive materials. Thus, a number of workers have endeavoured to prepare electrical conductive composites, namely electromagnetic interference shielding composites and a comprehensive review appeared recently [1]. It is believed that fibrous fillers are superior to other conductive fillers such as powdery particles or flakes, except in economical feasibility [1-4]. However, a new manufacturing process for short-length metal fibre (Chatter machining) developed by Nakagawa et al., overcame the problem [2-4]. When the development of functional materials such as in this case is desired, electrically conductive composites, durability or life-time of the function of the materials should be taken into consideration. From this point of view we have been studying thermal stability of shielding effectiveness of EMI of composites, and in our previous paper [8] we reported thermal stability of shielding effectiveness of EMI of composites prepared with various metal fibrous fillers and high-density polyethylene. Subsequently, we have examined thermal stability of the shielding effectiveness of EMI of composites prepared with various conductive fillers and polyamide, Nylon 12, and we found that in the case of aluminium fibre composites their functional stability was improved remarkably by the surface treatment of the fillers with commercial polymers and oligomers. Chatter-machined aluminium fibres, (10.9 g, Kobe Chutetsu Co. Ltd, Japan, diameter 60#m, length 3mm) were thoroughly blended with commercial powdery polyamide, Nylon 12 (23.4 g, Daiamid, Daicel, Japan) in a polyethylene envelope, and placed between steel plates with a spacer 0.2cm thick. The blended materials were heated at 130°C for 10 min in air, and then pressed at 130°C under 200kgcm -2 pressure for 5rain to give a 15cm x 15cm x 0.2cm sized composite containing 15 vol % aluminium. Aluminium fibres (10.9g) were dipped in 200ml dilute solution of commercial polymers or oligomers (0.1 wt%) for 10min under stirring, taken out and dried under reduced pressure for a day. Measurements of electrical conductivity and shielding effectiveness of EMI were similar to those described in a previous paper [5]. Thermal treatment was carried out up to 2500 h at 80°C in an electric oven equipped with a fan. It is well known that the aspect ratio of fillers is important for the generation of the electrical conductivity of the composites and fibrous fillers, especially chatter-machined short-lenght metal fibres which are superior to other conductive fillers such as powdery particles or flakes [1]. In addition, in a previous paper [5], we observed that 15 vol % metal fibrous fillers was quite sufficient to generate the electrical conductivity of the composites. Therefore, a series of composites were prepared using 15 vol % chatter-machined aluminium fibres which had been treated with various commercial polymers and oligomers. Shielding effectiveness of EMI of the composites is closely related to the electrical conductivity of the samples, therefore, changes in specific resistance of the samples during thermal treatment at 80 ° C were initially measured up to 2500h. As shown in Fig. 1, before heating the specific resistance of the sample prepared with untreated aluminium fibre was of the order of 10 .2 f~cm. The electrical conductivity of the composites prepared with aluminium fillers treated with
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