Electromagnetic-shielding, Wood-based Material Created Using a Novel Electroless Copper Plating Process

Abstract

A copper coating was deposited on Fraxinus mandshurica veneers to create an EMI-shielding, wood-based material via a simple electroless copper plating process. The wood veneers were pretreated in a NaBH 4 solution. The wood veneers treated with NaBH 4 were immersed in a plating bath in which copper coating was successfully initiated. The coatings were characterized by SEM-EDS, XPS, and XRD. The metal deposition, surface resistivity, and the effectiveness of electromagnetic shielding were measured. The morphology of the coating was uniform, compact, and continuous. The grain of the wood was preserved on the plated wood veneer, which had a copper-like color. But the samples were less glossy compared to those from Pd activation. EDS, XPS, and XRD results indicated that the coating consisted of Cu 0 with a crystalline structure. The surface resistivity and copper deposition were 0.399 Ω/cm 2 and 31.98 g/m 2 when the veneer was pretreated with a 3 g/L NaBH 4 solution for 10 min and plated for 25 min at 60 °C. The plated veneers exhibited good electromagnetic shielding effectiveness of over 40 dB in frequencies ranging from 10 MHz to 1.5 GHz.

Studies of Electroless Copper Plating on Poplar Veneer

“…Previous research of electroless-plated copper has focused on the selection of coating elements, the electrical conductivity, and the electromagnetic shielding effectiveness (Wang et al , 2013. However, there has been limited research on the effects of the relative concentration of plating solution on the structure and thickness of the coating and the relationship between the contact angle and the surface free energy.…”

Multilayer-Structured Wood Electroless Cu–Ni Composite Coatings for Electromagnetic Interference Shielding

“…It is well known that electroless is a method to deposition metals such as Ni and Cu onto an insulating substrate through the catalyzed chemical reduction of solution-phase metal ions at the substrate surface [15]. Ni, Cu, and Ni-based alloy coatings have been deposited onto wood surface to prepare electromagnetic shielding materials [16][17][18][19][20]. The uniform and continuous coatings can exhibit high conductivity and electromagnetic shielding effectiveness.…”

The Effect of pH on Electroless Ni-Fe-P Alloy Plating on Poplar Veneer

“…This wood-metal composite combines light quality and excellent electrical conductivity, as well as magnetism from two components. Current research focuses on plating copper and nickel on wood (Wang et al 2011(Wang et al , 2013Guo et al 2016;Pan et al 2016). In past research, the Ni-Fe-P alloy was deposited on a wood surface in alkaline conditions Wang et al 2015).…”