Copper-Nickel Faraday Fabric

Copper-nickel Faraday fabric is a class of conductive textiles in which copper-nickel alloy fibers — or polyester fibers plated with copper and nickel — are woven into the cloth to create a flexible conductive mesh. When the conductive thread density and continuity are sufficient, the fabric behaves as a thin, drapable Faraday surface.

Copper-nickel alloys are widely used in industrial and marine applications. Cu-Ni 90/10 (90% copper, 10% nickel) and Cu-Ni 70/30 are standard for seawater piping, ship hulls, and desalination plants because of excellent corrosion resistance in saline environments. The same corrosion resistance is valuable in textile form, since pure-copper or silver-coated fabrics can tarnish and lose surface conductivity over time, particularly with washing and humidity exposure.

Shielding effectiveness for any conductive fabric depends on:

- Material conductivity (Cu-Ni is somewhat lower than pure copper or silver but remains a good conductor) - Fiber density and continuity in the weave - Aperture size relative to the wavelength of interest - Frequency: shielding generally drops as frequency rises into mmWave because apertures become electrically larger - Test method (ASTM D4935 vs IEEE Std 299 vs free-space) — quoted figures from different methods are not directly comparable

No single number describes a fabric's performance across all frequencies. Reputable specifications quote attenuation as a curve over a frequency range, measured under a stated method, rather than a single peak value.

In practical use, copper-nickel Faraday fabric appears in EMI shielding gaskets, RF test enclosures, military and government secure facilities, and consumer products such as shielding blankets, phone pouches, and laptop sleeves. Its effectiveness in any specific consumer application depends on construction quality, coverage, and the geometry of how it is deployed between the user and the source.

RADIHALT designs EMF protection blankets built around woven copper-nickel Faraday fabric. The terminology on this page — from Faraday-cage physics through attenuation figures and ICNIRP exposure limits — is what underpins the engineering and the claims we publish about our products.

We try to keep our marketing language tied to the same vocabulary regulators and physicists use. If a definition on this page conflicts with anything on a RADIHALT product page, the glossary entry is the source we hold ourselves to.