Electrical Parameters of Conductive Tapes

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JeanTonin
 
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Electrical Parameters of Conductive Tapes

Post by JeanTonin »

Hello!
I am searching for conductive tapes to use in a project I have been developping and I found some Adafruit tapes, but I needed to know what are some of the their electrical parameters, such as the resistance per length, and if their surfaces are condutive as well. The products IDs that I found were: 1128, 3483, 3960, and 3961.
Thanks in advance!

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adafruit_support_mike
 
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Re: Electrical Parameters of Conductive Tapes

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

We don't have formal specs for them.

Copper foil has a typical resistance of 0.5mohm per square. The tape is 6mm wide, so that would be the edge length of your square.

The nylon fabric tape's resistance is higher.. around 0.1 to 0.2 Ohms per square. The tape is 8mm wide, so that's the edge lengh to use for that material.

If you aren't familiar with the concept of 'resistance per square', it's a side-effect of the way resistors behave. If we start with two 1 Ohm resistors in series, the end-to-end resistance is 2 Ohms. If we take two 2 Ohm resistors and put them in parallel, the parallel resistance will be 1 Ohm. We can keep expanding a resistor network like that, making it twice as wide and then twice as long, and the final resistance will always remain 1 Ohm.

The same principle applies to rectangles of any sheet material. The end-to-end resistance stays the same regardless of size, as long as the ratio of lengh to width remains the same. For simplicity's sake, we use a square as the standard shape.

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JeanTonin
 
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Re: Electrical Parameters of Conductive Tapes

Post by JeanTonin »

Thank you very much for the help and the values!

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