Conducting Flame-Sprayed Al Coatings on Textile Fabrics

Electrical conductive and flexible flame-sprayed Al coatings using powder and wire as raw material were successfully deposited onto diverse textile fabrics. The influences of the raw materials, spraying parameters, and fabric materials on the electrical conductivity and microstructure of the metal-fabric composites were investigated. A first series of experiments showed that a coating quantity higher than 20 mg/cm² is necessary for a very good surface conductivity. After the optimization of the spraying parameters, such as a reduced standoff distance and the use of a cooling setup, a high surface conductivity (∼500 S _A) was obtained, which is attributed to a better melting of the spray particles. The improvement in conductivity enables a reduction of the coating quantity, and therefore, the flexibility of the fabric materials is better conserved. This study showed that optimized electrically conductive composites onto flexible fabrics can be produced, without any preliminary thermal or chemical fabric specifications.