Electrically Conductive Flame Sprayed Aluminum Coatings on Textile Substrates

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/cm² 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.