Research on the Solution and Properties of Ni-P/n- Electroless Composite Plating

In order to further improve the corrosion resistance and wear resistance of the Ni-P coatings of electroless plating, electroless Ni-P/n-$Al_2O_3$ composite deposits were prepared by adding some nano $Al_2O_3$ Particles in Ni-P plating bath. The bath composition and proproties were studied in this paper. The orthogonal test was applied in order to get the new composite solution, taking the initial stable potential as evaluation standard and considering the elements correlation at the same time. The processing parameters have been optimized by single factor experiment in which the depositing speed was chosen as the evaluation standard. The results showed that the process is stable and the composite Ni-P/n-$Al_2O_3$ deposits werebright and smooth, whose hardness and corrosion resistance are much better than simple Ni-P coatings. Furthermore the surface appearance and structure of the composite Ni-P/n-$Al_2O_3$ coating were investigated by SEM and XRD method. It was proved that the coating surface is typical cystiform cells and its structure is amorphous. All test results ofcomposite coating showed that all various physical coating properties had been improved by adding nano-particles. The hardness of optimal coating is more than 600HV and increases to 1000HV after heat-treating, and its hardness is 20~50% higher than Ni-P coating. The rust points appeared in 200 hour by immersing the coating into the 10%HCl solution and the corrosive speed is $3{\times}10^{-3}mg/(cm^2{\cdot}h)$which was obtained after 300 hour. In the same condition Ni-P coating is $5.6{\times}10^{-3}mg/(cm^2{\cdot}h)$. The salt spray resistance of the layers can exceed 600h with the thickness $20{\mu}m$.