Flexible and durable conductive nickel/graphene-coated polyethylene terephthalate fabric for highly efficient electromagnetic shielding

This research describes a facile method to prepare durable and highly conductive polyethylene terephthalate (PET) fabrics for electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding applications. The PET fabric surface was first coated with graphene (Gr), which converted PET to conductive Gr-PET fabric. In addition, magnetic nickel (Ni) nanoparticles were deposited on the Gr-PET substrate by an electroplating approach with different deposition time intervals (5-20 min). The surface morphology, microstructure, magnetic properties, electric conductivity, and EMIs shielding properties of the Ni/Gr-PET fabrics were ascribed as a function of the deposition times. The Ni/Gr-PET fabrics with different nickel nanoparticle morphologies display different microstructures. The manufactured Ni/Gr-PET fabrics exhibited excellent electrical conductivity and saturation magnetization of 100-134 S/cm and 14-30 emu/g, respectively. The EMI shielding efficiency of the manufactured Ni/Gr-PET fabrics with 15 min of deposition time reached -70.0 dB with a thickness of 0.33 +/- 0.03 mm over the 8-12 GHz frequencies. The Ni/Gr-PET fabrics maintained relatively durable electrical properties even after cyclic bending, ultra-sonication, and treatment with organic solvents. It has been demonstrated that the properties of Ni/GrPET fabrics can be controlled by changing the surface morphology and microstructure of the nickel nanoparticles, which provides a novel protocol to manufacture PET fabrics with highly efficient EMI shielding properties.