Development and investigation of electromagnetic shielding fabrics with different electrically conductive additives

• Different electrical conductive pastes have been screen printed on woven fabrics.
• Technological guidelines for designing coated textiles intended to protect against EMR are presented.
• Satisfactory EMR shielding values were obtained at different bandwidth, i.e. 20–50 kHz and 2–20 GHz.
• Partially coated fabrics expose considerably lower SE within frequency range of 2 GHz ÷ 20 GHz.
• The highest attenuation of the electromagnetic energy was obtained for the fabric fully coated with PEDOT-PSS.

To obtain the protection against electromagnetic radiation (EMR) emitted by operating electrical and electronic devices, the shielding materials based on woven fabrics coated with the highly conductive layers were designed and investigated. The electrostatic charge dissipation properties and EMR shielding properties within certain frequency bands were investigated and compared with such properties of textile fabrics with incorporated conductive metal fibres. Also the influence of washing on electrical properties of developed fabrics was examined.This study presents technological guidelines for designing coated textile fabrics, which are able to safeguard high electrostatic charge dissipation properties and to provide effective protection against EMR, using two types of electrically conductive coatings. The results of EMR shielding measurements, especially within the range of 2 GHz–20 GHz, showed that fabrics with conductive coatings exhibit certain advantages over fabrics with incorporated metalized yarns. Whereas shielding properties at the low frequency range of 20 kHz–50 kHz for all investigated conductive fabrics are similar despite the type of conductive additive. Methods for measurement of electrostatic properties, reflection and transmission as well as the assessment of EMR shielding effectiveness (SE) are also presented.

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