Thin Metallic Coatings on Carbon Fiber for Enhanced mm-Wave Absorption

This paper describes the effect of metal plating on the reflection, transmission and absorption of resonant fibers in epoxy. We demonstrate that addition of either a nickel or copper coating leads to reduced reflection, reduced transmission and enhanced loss for low concentrations of these carbon fibers. At mm-wave frequencies, we demonstrate that more than lOdB of absorption can be achieved in transmission through a 1.65mm sample of epoxy containing copper/nickel-coated carbon fibers.