Improving Electroless Ag Plating and Depositing Graphene Oxide / Polymer Composite Film on the Ag Layer for Corrosion Protection

In this work, a meta- aramid (PMIA) substrate was pretreated by embedding a Ag catalyst, and an environmentally friendly ammonia-free silver plating bath was designed for electroless silver plating to fabricate a silver plated material (PMIA-Ag). Furthermore, a graphene oxide/polyethylenimine (GO/PEI)10 film was prepared via the layer by layer self- assembly technique. By implementing hydrophobic modification of heptadecafluorodecyltriethoxysilane (PFDS) on the film surface, a (GO/PEI)10- PFDS composite protective film was also fabricated. The results show that prepared PMIA-Ag via the improved electroless plating technique has good electrical properties. The sheet resistance is 20~30 mΩ/sq and the average electromagnetic shielding effectiveness is 68.23 dB in the frequency range of 30~3000 MHz. Moreover, the prepared (GO/PEI)10-PFDS composite protective film exhibits excellent anti-corrosion and anti- tarnish properties. The electrochemical data show that the surface coverage of the protective film on the silver coating is 96.48%, while the corrosion inhibition efficiency on the silver coating reachs 85.28%. © 2022, Editorial Board of Polymer Materials Science & Engineering. All right reserved.