Bio-inspired Fabrication of Cu-Ni Coatings onto Mercerized Flax Fabric by Electroless Plating

• Published in: Fibers and polymers Vol. 21; no. 2; pp. 324 - 333
• Main Authors: Zhu, Lin, Zhao, Hang, Lan, Bijian, Hou, Lei, Bi, Siyi, Xu, Yumeng, Lu, Yinxiang
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Seoul The Korean Fiber Society 01-02-2020; Springer Nature B.V; 한국섬유공학회
• Subjects: Chemistry; Chemistry and Materials Science; Copper; Copper plating; Cupronickel; Dopamine; Electroless nickel plating; Electromagnetic shielding; Field emission microscopy; Flax; Fourier transforms; Functional groups; Mercerization; Morphology; Nickel coatings; Photoelectrons; Polymer Sciences; Spectroscopic analysis; Spectrum analysis; Substrates; X ray photoelectron spectroscopy; X-ray spectroscopy; 섬유공학; Shielding effectiveness; Dopamine; Electroless plating; Bio-inspired fabrication; Cu-Ni coating
• ISSN: 1229-9197; 1875-0052
• DOI: 10.1007/s12221-020-9223-2

This research mainly prepared a bio-friendly electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding fabric, and discussed the influence of the grammage (i.e. 120 g/m
2
, 160 g/m
2
and 210 g/m
2
, etc) of fabric substrate on the preparation of metal-based EMI shielding conductive fabric by electroless plating. A series of steps involved mercerization, dopamine (DoPA) modification, Ni0 seeding and electroless copper-nickel (Cu-Ni) plating were carried out to fabricate ideal EMI shielding fabric. The prepared Cu-Ni fabric endowed relatively high EMI shielding effectiveness (SE) (34.80-42.00 dB) ranging from 30 to 4500 MHz, which made it a huge potential in the field of wearable EMI shielding. Moreover, another discovery was that a relative higher grammage may lead to a lower total metal loading. Furthermore, Fourier transformation infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) measurements were conducted to verify the introduction of functional groups in mercerization, modification and activation procedures. The crystalline phases and morphologies of resulting Cu-Ni coatings were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and field emission-scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) measurements. The atomic ratio (at.%) of Cu and Ni in the sample was determined by Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (EDX) measurements. Overall, the Cu-Ni alloy fabric prepared in this research met the requirements of health, coating lining and EMI shielding.