Shielding Textiles

EMI Shielding Effectiveness of Metal-Coated Fabric

At a few microns of silver the coating is a fraction of one skin depth. Nearly all the shielding is reflection, and making it thicker buys almost nothing.

Conductive Layer Coating
Ω/sq
µm
µr

Above 1 only for nickel and ferromagnetic coatings.

Threat Incident field
MHz

Shielding Effectiveness

— dB

Total attenuation of the incident field

Loss Mechanisms

Reflection Loss
— dB
Absorption Loss
— dB
Skin Depth
— µm
Field Attenuation
— ×
Bulk Resistivity
— µΩ·cm

This is the plane-wave far-field result for a continuous conductive sheet, and a fabric is not continuous — apertures at the weave, seams, closures and cable entries govern real enclosures and routinely cost tens of decibels the material itself would have delivered. Near-field magnetic shielding at low frequency follows entirely different rules and this will overstate it badly. Multiple-reflection correction is omitted, which is conservative for thick shields and optimistic where thickness is well under a skin depth. Verify by measurement to ASTM D4935 or a full enclosure test.

EMI Shielding Effectiveness of Metal-Coated Fabric — free, with the formula and a worked example, at Textile School.