Electrically Conductive Flame Sprayed Aluminum Coatings on Textile Substrates

Abstract

In this study, electrically conductive and flexible aluminum coatings using powder and wire flame spraying were successfully deposited onto diverse textiles. The influences of various process parameters and fabric materials on the electrical conductivity and microstructure of the metal-fabric composites were investigated. Preliminary results show that to obtain excellent coating surface conductivity values a specific coating quantity of higher than 20 mg/cm 2 is required. After further optimization of the spraying parameters, very good specific surface conductivities ($500 S A ) could be obtained even with reduced coating quantities. Through an adequate parameter optimization a reduction in the specific coating quantity was also achieved while high conductivity values were retained. In addition, when the coating quantity was reduced, the flexibility of the fabric substrates was better conserved. This investigation illustrates that optimized electrically conductive composites with flexible fabric substrates can be produced without any preliminary thermal or chemical fabric specifications.

Deposition of metallic coatings on polymer surfaces using cold spray

“…successfully managed to deposit aluminium on fabric materials by using flame spray [12]. It was possible to achieve coating conductivity, despite the high level of internal porosity.…”

A Review of Thermal Spray Metallization of Polymer-Based Structures

“…3, the metal coating and the granular particles used for roughening the polymer-based substrate are bound by mechanical interlocking. On the other hand, the deposition of thermally sprayed coatings onto polymer-based substrates without surface preparation has also been reported in the literature ( Ref 21,25,40,47,68). In cold spraying, the sprayed particles were heated to temperatures below the melting temperature of the powder material.…”

“…Voyer et al (Ref 34,40) showed that the surface conductivity of Al coatings deposited onto polyester textile substrates increased proportionally to the coating thickness, while the flexibility of the polymer fabric was retained and was unchanged. Boyer et al (Ref 53) characterized flame-sprayed Al-12Si coatings deposited onto PU substrates.…”

Flexible and Conducting Metal-Fabric Composites Using the Flame Spray Process for the Production of Li-Ion Batteries

“…Aluminum powders were not taken into account since it had been reported earlier that the use of wires produced coatings having higher specific electrical conductivities than those obtained while using powders (Ref 24,25). The spray gun was mounted on a six-axis robot (ABB, Model IRB2400/S4C, Vä sterå s, Sweden), while the fabric substrate was maintained in a fixed position during the spray process.…”

“…The specific surface electrical conductivities (S A ) of the different coated fabrics were measured using a selfdeveloped 4-points surface conductivity measurement setup, as shown in Since the aim of this study is to demonstrate the possibility of producing flexible batteries out of aluminumcoated textiles using the flame spray process, the reader is referred to the studies published earlier by the author to have a much profound insight on the optimization procedure of the spray parameters (Ref 24,25). For clarity purposes, only a brief overview of the spray parameters and their optimization and of the textile materials used will be given here.…”