Silver electroless plating on aminated graphene oxide-based cotton fabric for electromagnetic interference shielding and bioactivity

The rapid development of electronic and telecommunications technology has made electromagnetic radiation pollution and interference a serious concern. Surrounded by harmful electromagnetic radiation for a long period of time, serious human health consequences like cancer, headaches, nausea, and irregular brain development are expected. Therefore, there is an urgent need for extremely effective electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding materials to protect human life and the environment. The main objective of this study is to develop high-performance EMI shielding textiles within a broad range of frequency to protect human beings from hazard-ous radiations. For this, we propose a facile method of silver electroless plating on aminated graphene oxide (NH2-GO) based cotton fabric for remarkable EMI shielding performance within the different bands of frequency namely, UHF band, L band, S band, C band, and X band. The successful formation of silver-plated fabrics was confirmed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and X-ray diffraction (XRD). EMI shielding performance was evaluated by Vector network analyzer (VNA) having a fre-quency range from 100 MHz to 13.6 GHz and our results showed that Silver-plated aminated GO-based fabric exhibits 99% shielding within the wide range of frequency bands as amination of GO provides more functional groups for silver electroless plating and maximum shielding effectiveness was about 49 dB at 6.7 GHz with 1.2 mm thickness. Moreover, all modified fabrics exhibit good antibacterial activity, and the highest antibacterial activity was shown by silver/rGO fabric about 99.99%. Thus, the remarkable EMI shielding performance of silver-plated NH2-GO fabrics tends to make significant progress in eliminating electromagnetic radiation pollution from our environment within a broad range of frequency.