Ultrasonic-assisted electroless deposition of Ag on PET fabric with low silver content for EMI shielding

Silver (Ag)/poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) fabrics have been fabricated using ultrasonic-assisted electroless Ag plating. The structures of the Ag coating PET fabrics were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) analysis, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Raman spectrometer, X-ray diffraction (XRD), and thermogrametric analysis (TG), respectively. The morphology and composition analysis show that the silver plating on PET fabrics is compact and continuous; TG curves of PET fabrics before and after plating indicate that the silver content is about 6.7% by weight; electromagnetic measurement demonstrates that the shielding effectiveness (SE) is more than 32 dB at frequency ranging from 0.01 MHz to 18 GHz. The effects of ultrasonic technique and silane modification process on electroless silver plating were also discussed.