TITLE:
Attenuation and Shielding Performance of Wood-Polymer Composites Synthesized via Melt-Blend Technique
AUTHORS:
Abubakar Yakubu, Zulkifli Abbas, Abdullahi Sirajo
KEYWORDS:
Composites, Wood Filler, Attenuation, Shielding, Microwave
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Access Library Journal,
Vol.7 No.2,
February
17,
2020
ABSTRACT: In the recent, filler-polymer composites researches have been on the rise due to its implication to electromagnetic interference (EMI) applications. The composition, morphology and surface rheology of the filler-polymer composites play an immense role in determining the electrical, mechanical, and optical properties. In this paper, the preparation and characterization of micro-composites of wood (biodegradable waste material)/polycaprolactone (PCL) composites are reported. The micro-composites were prepared using melt blend technique via the solid state route. This method was selected because of its numerous advantages compared to other methods such as being easy, cheap with mass production of materials. To determine attenuation, rectangular waveguide (RWG) method was used. The magnitudes of the transmission coefficient (S21) from the waveguide measurement were used to determine the attenuation of the wood-PCL composite substrate with respect to different percentages of wood filler. Result from the measurement showed amongst others that as the filler content increases, the attenuation increases. The highest magnitude for attenuation was calculated for the 62.5% wood-PCL composites with a value of-6.46 dB and the least attenuation was calculated for the 12.5% wood micro filler, which value gave-3.34 dB which is good for low shielding applications. Scanning electron microscope (SEM) was used to study the surface morphology of the samples.