Characterisation of non-woven materials for architectural electromagnetic shielding

The architectural shielding has gained at present a wide spreading both in test laboratories and in the applications related to information protection. For this purpose, conductive textile fabrics made of a mixture of metallized synthetic fibers in an ordered or random structure are used, looking like wallpaper with 50-400 μm applied on the walls by a usual adhesive. The use of the entire available space, the assurance of natural lighting, the low cost and shielding effectiveness of at least 60 dB lead to the frequent utilization of this technology. In this paper, results on the characterization of the architectural shielding materials by measuring the surface resistance are presented. The microstructure of such material and the specific nature of its behavior as compared to a metallic foil are analyzed.