Aircraft coating for electromagnetic interference shielding with flame retardancy and Joule heating capability

EMI shielding coating is urgently required to protect internal instruments of aircraft from electromagnetic interference (EMI). Herein, a multifunctional nickel-plated carbon fiber/silicon rubber (Ni@CF/SR) composite material is prepared by gentle electroless plating and polymerization. The experiment is designed to explore the influence of the filling amount and mesh number of CF on the performance of coating. The 60 wt% CF-100 sample with only 0.7 mm thickness exhibits superior EMI shielding effectiveness (SE = 42.6 dB) within the Xband frequency range, with EMI SET/thickness of 60.9 dB/mm. It can tolerate a high temperature of 1300 degrees C and self-extinguish within 5s, and the coating has good Joule heating performances and mechanical properties. Especially, after ablation and heating, there is no weakening, even an upward trend in electromagnetic SE values. Furthermore, the waveguide method is used to verify the practical application scenarios of this composite material, suggesting that it can block 99.9% of electromagnetic waves, which is expected to be applied to the civil industry and improve the safety factor of the aircraft.