• Journal of the Korean institute of surface engineering
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• v.55 no.6
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• pp.460-468
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• 2022

Due to its high electrical conductivity, low contact resistance, good weldability and high corrosion resi-stance, gold is widely used in electronic components such as connectors and printed circuit boards (PCB). Gold ion salts currently used in gold plating are largely cyan-based salts and non-cyanic salts. The cya-nide bath can be used for both high and low hardness, but the non-cyanide bath can be used for low hardness plating. Potassium gold cyanide (KAu(CN)₂) as a cyanide type and sodium gold sulfite (Na₃[Au(SO)₃]₂) salt as a non-cyanide type are most widely used. Although the cyan bath has excellent performance in plating, potassium gold cyanide (KAu(CN)₂) used in the cyan bath is classified as a poison and a toxic substance and has strong toxicity, which tends to damage the positive photoresist film and make it difficult to form a straight side-wall. There is a need to supplement this. Therefore, it is intended to supplement this with an eco-friendly process using sodium sulfite sodium salt that does not contain cyan. Therefore, the main goal is to form a gold plating layer with a controllable hardness using a non-cyanide gold plating solution. In this study, the composition of a non-cyanide gold plating solution that maintains hardness even after annealing is generated through gold-palladium alloying by adding thallium, a crystal regulator among electrolysis factors affecting the structure and hardness, and changes in plating layer structure and crystallinity before and after annealing the correlation with the hardness.