• Journal of the Korean institute of surface engineering
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.214-218
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• 1999

The effect of additives in nickel and copper electroplating were investigated for MEMS applications. Saccharin and gelatin were used as additives in nickel and copper electroplating bath respectively. The morphology and surface hardness of electroplated coating were investigated with additive concentration. Microstructures were fabricated with optimum conditions.

• Journal of the Korean institute of surface engineering
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• v.40 no.1
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• pp.16-22
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• 2007

Recently, mesoporous metallic materials are becoming more and more important in various applications like catalysts, electrochemical detectors, batteries, and fuel cells because of their high surface area. Among the various methods for manufacturing mesoporous structure, surfactant templating method followed by electroplating has been tried in this study. A mesoporous metallic film was prepared by electrodeposition from electroplating solution mixed with surfactant template. Nonionic type lyotropic liquid crystalline surfactant, Brij56, and nickel acetate based solution were selected as a template material and electroplating solution, respectively. To determine the content of surfactant forming a hexagonal column structure, the phase diagram of electroplating solution and surfactant mixture has been exploited by polarized optical microscopy equipped with heating and cooling stage. Nickel films were electroplated on Cu foil by stepwise potential input method to alleviate the concentration polarization occurred during the electroplating process. TEM and XRD analyses were performed to characterize the size and shape of mesostructures in manufactured nickel films, and electrochemical characterization was also carried out using cyclic voltammetry.

• 한국초전도학회:학술대회논문집
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• v.15
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• pp.90-90
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• 2005

• Carbon letters
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.186-190
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• 2004

In this work, a nickel metal (Ni) electroplating on the activated carbon fiber (Ni/ACFs) surfaces was carried out to remove the toxic hydrogen chloride (HCl) gas. The surface properties of the treated ACFs were determined by using nitrogen adsorption isotherms at 77 K, SEM, and X-ray diffraction (XRD) measurements. HCl removal efficiency was confirmed by a gas-detecting tube technique. As a result, the nickel metal contents on the ACF surfaces were increased with increasing the plating time. And, it was found that the specific surface area or the micropore volume of the ACFs studied was slightly decreased as increasing the plating time. Whereas, it was revealed that the HCl removal efficiency containing nickel metal showed higher efficiency values than that of untreated ACFs. These results indicated that the presence of nickel metal on the ACF surfaces played an important role in improving the HCl removal over the Ni/ACFs, due to the catalytic reactions between nickel and chlorine.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2007.06a
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• pp.250-253
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• 2007

An evaporated Ti/Pd/Ag contact system is most widely used to make high-efficiency silicon solar cells, however, the system is not cost effective due to expensive materials and vacuum techniques. Commercial solar cells with screen-printed contacts formed by using Ag paste suffer from a low fill factor and a high shading loss because of high contact resistance and low aspect ratio. Low-cost Ni and Cu metal contacts have been formed by using electroless plating and electroplating techniques to replace the Ti/Pd/Ag and screen-printed Ag contacts. Ni/Cu alloy is plated on a silicon substrate by electro-deposition of the alloy from an acetate electrolyte solution, and nickel-silicide formation at the interface between the silicon and the nickel enhances stability and reduces the contact resistance. It was, therefore, found that nickel-silicide was suitable for high-efficiency solar cell applications. The Ni contact was formed on the front grid pattern by electroless plating followed by anneal ing at $380{\sim}400^{\circ}C$ for $15{\sim}30$ min at $N_{2}$ gas to allow formation of a nickel-silicide in a tube furnace or a rapid thermal processing(RTP) chamber because nickel is transformed to NiSi at $380{\sim}400^{\circ}C$. The Ni plating solution is composed of a mixture of $NiCl_{2}$ as a main nickel source. Cu was electroplated on the Ni layer by using a light induced plating method. The Cu electroplating solution was made up of a commercially available acid sulfate bath and additives to reduce the stress of the copper layer. The Ni/Cu contact was found to be well suited for high-efficiency solar cells and was successfully formed by using electroless plating and electroplating, which are more cost effective than vacuum evaporation. In this paper, we investigated low-cost Ni/Cu contact formation by electroless and electroplating for crystalline silicon solar cells.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2004.04a
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• pp.978-982
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• 2004

We present high aspect ratio 100nm-scale nickel stamper using e-beam lithography process and Cr/Qz mask for the injection molding process of nano grating patterns. Conventional photolithography blank mask (CrON/Cr/Qz) consists of quartz substrate, Cr layer of UV protection and CrON of anti-reflection layer. We have used Cr/Qz blank mask without anti-reflection layer of CrON which is non-conductive material and ebeam lithography process in order to simplify the nickel electroplating process. In nickel electroplating process, we have used Cr layer of UV protection as seed layer of nickel electroplating. Fabrication conditions of photolithography mask using e-beam lithography are optimized with respect to CrON/Cr/Qz blank mask. In this paper, we have optimized e-beam lithography process using Cr/Qz blank mask and fabricated nickel stamper using Cr seed layer. CrON/Cr/Qz blank mask and Cr/Qz blank mask require optimal e-beam dosage of $10.0{\mu}C/cm^2$ and $8.5{\mu}C/cm^2$, respectively. Finally, we have fabricated $116nm{\pm}6nm-width$ and $240nm{\pm}20nm-height$ nickel grating stamper for the injection molding pattern.

• Journal of the Korean institute of surface engineering
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.76-82
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• 1988

The bright nickel electroplatings were carried out the Watt bath containg a solobel saccharin as class I brightner and para substituted benzaldehydes as class II one. Extended Huckel MO calculation was done and polarization was measured to examine between $\pi$-electron density and the brightness. The correlation is also investigated between $\pi$-electron density of oxygen atom of aldehyde group and slope of polarization curve. As a result of the analysis of rate equation of nucleation, the surface energy of the deposited particle was obtained from the slope of the plot of $\ell$nI against 1/η2, and also the reat equation of nucleation found to influnced on the leveling on the basis of adsorption theory. We have proposed the general electroplating mechanism that is applied other to all other electroplating but nickel one. The above elucidated mechanism can be extended can be extended to the all electroplating other than bright nickel electroplating.

• Journal of the Korean institute of surface engineering
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• v.37 no.6
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• pp.344-349
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• 2004

Emulsions were formed through putting small quantity of nickel electroplating solution into supercritical carbon dioxide, and then electroplating in the $sc-CO_2$ emulsions was conducted. It is an environmental-friendly technology that can solve the treatment of a large quantity of toxic plating wastewater, which is a big problem in the existing wet plating, and also can reduce secondary waste generation fundamentally. Supercritical carbon dioxide emulsions enhanced by ultrasonic horn were formed by non-ionic surfactant and nickel solution. Plating condition within emulsions was set up as 120bar and $55^{\circ}C$ through measurement of electrical conductivity following the pressure change. Experiments were conducted respectively against supercritical carbon dioxide emulsions electroplating and general chemical electroplating, and then their results were compared and analyzed. As the experiment result utilizing emulsions, plating surface was formed very evenly even with a small quantity of electroplating solution, and fine particles were plated compactly without any pinhole or crack due to hydrogenation, which occurs in general electroplating. Used electroplating solution can be reused through recovery process. Therefore, this technology will be able to be applied as new clean technology in electro-plating.

• Journal of the Korean institute of surface engineering
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• v.48 no.2
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• pp.62-67
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• 2015

Nickel is a commercially important and versatile element in electroplating. The applications of nickel electroplating fall into three main categories: decorative, functional and electroforming. In decorative applications, electroplated nickel is most often applied in combination with electrodeposited chromium. Nickel is deposited on surfaces to improve corrosion and wear resistance or modify magnetic and other properties. Electroforming is electroplating applied to the fabrication of products of various kinds. Nickel is deposited onto a substrate and then removed from it to create a part made entirely of nickel. In this study, mechanical property of Ni electrodeposits in various manufacturing condition such as temperature, current density, pH and electrolyte content, was investigated to understand effect of electrolysis condition on mechanical property. Vickers hardness increased as the temperature and pH increased and current density and electrolyte content decreased and pH increased. The results were explained by cathode overvoltage and hydrogen evolution.

• KIEE International Transactions on Electrophysics and Applications
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• v.4C no.5
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• pp.247-251
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• 2004

We report highly improved yield strength of nickel thin film, prepared using electroplating. The micro-scaled nickel cantilever is found to have significantly higher yield strength than bulk nickel. For the yield strength test, the heights of the micro-scaled cantilever were varied up to 60 ${\mu}{\textrm}{m}$ and electrostatic force was used for actuation. Stress of the bent cantilever was estimated using the FEM large deflection model. The yield strength of the thin nickel film is found to be over five times higher than that of the bulk nickel previously published. Results from this study indicate that metal microstructures can be used for MEMS applications requiring large deflection.