Study On The Carbon Fiber Powder With Electroless Deposition And Its Electromagnetic Performance

As a kind of high performance fiber, the production and the application of carbon fiber make lots of effect on the national defense and even on the national economy. In this article, an excellent functional composite was developed by studying on the carbon fiber powder with electroless deposition which was used for improving the electromagnetic properties.In the pretreatment, AgNO₃ is used as the activator which plays a role in the catalysis of electroless Ni/Fe-Ni plating of carbon fiber. It has lower cost compared with other noble metal salts, such as PdCl₂. Hydrazine was used as reducing agent in the electroless plating experiments. SEM micrograph and EDX analysis of different samples show that there are some pure electroless metal deposited on the surfaces of both microcoils and carbon fiber powder. At the same time the optimum plating bath formula and plating parameters for electroless Ni plating was found through uniform design method. The optimum plating bath formula and plating parameters for electroless Fe-Ni plating was found through uniform design method and single factor experiment. Those two optimum plating bath formulas and plating parameters were used in the next surface electroless metal-plating experiments on the microcoils successfully.In the comparisons of the electromagnetic parameters among all the samples, it was proved that the dielectric loss of the samples with electroless metal depositions was several and tens times even as much as the raw ones. And also the magnetic loss had some change. Comparing to the samples with electroless plating, hydrazine as the reducing agent can improve the electromagnetic performance of the raw ones much better. The microwave reflection loss curve had been simulated. It shows that the microwave absorbing ability of the sample with electroless deposition has been improved in the test frequency range(2～18GHz), especially in the lower frequency range.