Graphene Based Wideband Electromagnetic Absorbing Textiles at Microwave Bands

Abstract

The design and realization of graphene based wideband electromagnetic (EM) absorbing textiles are becoming of primary interest. Hence, the development of new conductive coatings to be cast onto commercial textiles is crucial. In this article, we propose new graphene based absorbing textiles that conjugate outstanding EM absorbing properties at radiofrequency with low-weight, flexibility, cost-effectiveness, and washability. With this purpose, an innovative production process of polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) coatings filled with graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs) is developed for the production of radar-absorbing coated textiles, which are fully characterized in terms of morphological, electrical, and EM absorbing properties. In particular, the complex dielectric permittivity of the coated textiles including different amounts of GNPs is assessed through the measurement of the complex permittivity of a benchmark sample, the consequent estimation of the average GNP size and the prediction by simulations of the effective complex permittivity of graphene based coatings loaded with different GNP amounts. Such predicted data are crucial to design radar absorbing textiles with minimum bandwidths at -10 dB of 5 GHz and reflection coefficients below -5 dB over all the frequency range from 8 up to 18 GHz. These textiles are then produced and characterized in terms of reflection coefficient in free space against a plane wave with normal incidence. The obtained results demonstrate the full satisfaction of the design requirements. In fact, the produced samples show a reflection coefficient with a bandwidth at -10 dB up to 77% of the resonant frequency.