Preparation and Characterization of Highly Conductive Nickel-coated Glass Fibers

In this work, we employed an electroless nickel plating on glass fibers in order to enhance the electric conductivity of fibers. And the effects of metal content and plating time on the conductivity of fibers were investigated. From the results, island-like metal clusters were found on the fiber surfaces in initial plating state, and perfect metallic layers were observed after 10 min of plating time. The thickness of metallic layers on fiber surfaces was proportion to plating time, and the electric conductivity showed similar trends. The nickel cluster sizes on fibers decreased with increasing plating time, indicating that surface energetics of the fibers could become more homogeneous and make well-packed metallic layers, resulting in the high conductivity of Ni/glass fibers.