Cost advantages for electromagnetic shielding

Technical textiles made of aluminium-coated high-performance fibres help to achieve quality and cost advantages in electro-magnetic shielding.

Fibre Coat produces short fibres, yarns and fabrics from basalt fibres coated with aluminium for electromagnetic shielding in electric vehicles, aerospace and buildings, among others. At JEC World 2022, from 3 to 5 May in Paris, the Aachen-based company will introduce its new Alu Coat product line for the first time as part of the Startup Booster competition.

Fibre Coat founders Robert Brüll, Alexander Lüking and Richard Haas have succeeded in sheathing individual basalt fibres with aluminium in an economical process, reducing production costs to a fraction of those of conventional methods. “Our innovative high-performance fibres not only improve existing products,” as Brüll explains, “but also enable completely new EM shielding applications in electric vehicles or aerospace applications with lightweight, flexible fabrics. Alu Coat also opens up completely new possibilities for smart textiles or shielding in buildings.”

The Alu Coat product line includes chopped fibres and yarns that consist of up to 100 individual fibres, as well as woven or nonwoven fabrics. They are thermally and electrically conductive and temperature resistant up to 600 °C (1,100 °F). The material properties can be precisely adjusted via parameters such as the thickness of the coating or the diameter of the core fibres and adapted to customer-specific requirements. At the same time, Fibre Coat's coating technology offers significant quality and cost advantages in electromagnetic shielding compared to existing technologies such as pure aluminium fibres, aluminium foils or sheets.

“And the winner is: Fibre Coat!” was stated at the JEC Forum DACH (www.jec-dach.events) in Frankfurt at the end of November 2021. The start-up from Aachen won the “JEC Composites Startup Booster” competition there. Citing that Fibre Coat “makes it possible to use cost-effective two-component materials in lightweight construction, electromagnetic shielding and industrial filtration.” This also qualified Fibre Coat for the Startup Booster competition at JEC World 2022 in Paris.