Investigation on the shielding effectiveness properties of electrically conductive textiles

This paper is devoted to investigate which basic mechanisms are responsible for the major part of the shielding of conductive textiles by means of measurement of the shielding effectiveness (SE). Both woven and nonwoven textiles with different thickness, nickel amount and fabric geometry are examined. Results show that the electrically conductive textiles tested present different SE and surface resistivity values in the frequency range 300 kHz - 3.6 GHz. The results seem to show that a low surface resistivity value may be a requirement for a higher shielding effectiveness especially for woven materials. The nickel amount used for the metallization does not have such a strong relation with the SE, as the geometry of the warp and weft of the textile plays an important role in the shielding performance, too.