A study on the uniformity of the electrodeposits in Pb-Sn-Cu ternary alloy plating

Pb-Sn-Cu삼원 합금 전착층의 균일성 연구

Lead-tin-copper ternary alloy electrodeposition is conducted onto the inner bore surface of plain bearings as an overlay in order to investigate the effect of slot width, current density and fluoboric acid concentration on the uniformity of overlay. The thickness of overlay is analyzed by means of current distribution resulting from the overvoltage of plating bath and the apparent distance between cathode and anode. The result demonstrate that the uniformity of overlay is remarkably dependent of the slot size and current density, but has little bearing on the fluoboric acid concentration over 100g/L. This present study indicates that uniform overlay is obtainable within the tolerable thickness of ${\pm}2{\mu}m$ by using the slot width of 22mm. The surface morphology examination also shows the important role of concentration polarization of the micro-uniformity of overlay. The micro-uniformity has improved at the low concentration polarization which resulted from operating at the low current density and high fluoboric acid concentration. The surface morphology of deposits exhibits the vivid pyramid crystalline in the plating condition of low concentration polarizatio and all deposits have columnar structure parallel to the applied electric field regardless of the electroplating condition used.