Electroless plating of Cu-Ni-P alloy on PET fabrics and effect of plating parameters on the properties of conductive fabrics

Electroless plating of Cu-Ni-P alloy on polyethylene terephthalate (PET) fabrics and effect of plating parameters on the properties of alloy-coated fabrics were investigated. The deposition rate increased with the increase of temperature, pH and nickel ion concentration. The addition of K4Fe(CN)6 to the solution could reduce the deposition rate and make the deposits become more compact. The color of the deposits also had a corresponding improvement, changing from dark-brown to copper-bright with the addition of K4Fe(CN)6 to the plating solution. The deposits have an intensified copper (1 1 1) plane orientation with the addition of K4Fe(CN)6 to the plating bath. The surface electrical resistance of alloy-coated fabrics increased with increase of nickel ions concentration in the solution. The addition of K4Fe(CN)6 to the solution reduced significantly the surface resistance of alloy-coated fabrics. The conductive fabrics with high shielding effectiveness could be prepared at the optimum condition with 0.0038 M nickel ions and 2 ppm K4Fe(CN)6. As the deposit weight on the fabric was 40 g/m2, the shielding effectiveness of alloy-coated fabrics was more than 85 dB at frequency ranging from 100 MHz to 20 GHz