Carbon fiber coating with silver using intervening Au/Pd nanoparticle films produced using a spark discharge

A low roughness conductive silver film on a fiber substrate was fabricated via a catalytic surface activation (needed to initiate electroless silver deposition) with spark produced gold aerosol nanoparticles. Gold had a similar lattice parameter with silver in crystallinity and thus a crystallographic misfit between gold activated substrate and silver was minimized during the deposition, resulting in formation of a flat silver film. Properties were compared with those obtained with palladium aerosol activation, the gold activation enhanced thin-metallic film properties in surface root-mean-square roughness (nm: 8, gold vs 44, palladium) and electrical resistivity (μΩ cm: 64, gold vs 498, palladium) at 88 mg/g (silver/substrate) in deposition amount.