Tailorable electromagnetic interference shielding using nickel coated glass fabric-epoxy composite with excellent mechanical property

Glass fibre fabric was coated with nickel using electroless plating technique. A suitable pre-treatment method was adopted to make the glass fabric surface catalytic. The glass fabric was coated to various thicknesses of nickel by varying the plating parameters. The effect of coating thickness on electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding and absorption was studied in J (5.8-8.2 GHz), X (8.2-12.4 GHz) and Ku-(12.4-18 GHz) bands. The optimum coating thickness of 400 nm would be desirable to achieve shielding effectiveness of 30 dB in J, X and Ku-band (efficiency level of 99.9%). The absorption co-efficient was found to be dominant for coating thickness of ~ 32 nm. Further, a 3 mm thick epoxy-glass laminate was made by embedding a single layer of nickel coated glass fibre fabric with a coating thickness of ~ 6 µm. It was observed that in such a composite laminate with Ni coated fabric, EMI SE of ~ 50 dB could be achieved. It was also observed that the mechanical properties of the laminate bearing a Ni coated layer is better than the plain laminate as a result of improved interfacial characteristics in the presence of active Ni.