• Journal of the Korean institute of surface engineering
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• v.55 no.5
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• pp.299-307
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• 2022

Gold plating is used as a coating of connector in printed circuit boards, ceramic integrated circuit packages, semiconductor devices and so on, because the film has excellent electric conductivity, solderability and chemical properties such as durability to acid and other chemicals. In most cases, internal connection between device and package and external terminals for connecting packaging and printed circuit board are electroless Ni-P plating followed by immersion Au plating (ENIG) to ensure connection reliability. The deposition behavior and film properties of electroless Au plating are affected by P content, grain size and mixed impurity components in the electroless Ni-P alloy film used as the underlayer plating. In this study, the correlation between electroless nickel plating used as a underlayer layer and cyanide-free electroless Au plating using thiomalic acid as a complexing agent and aminoethanethiol as a reducing agent was investigated.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.9-17
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• 2014

In this study, in order to improve the ignitability of high energy aluminum powder, natural oxide films (alumina) were chemically removed, and instead nickel coat was applied. We used an electroless plating for nickel coating and confirmed quantitatively and qualitatively a time-dependent degree of nickel coating through analysis of surface by SEM/EDS. We also conducted element analysis by XRD and thermal properties by TGA/DSC in air oxidizer environment. There results explained the ignition enhancement mechanism of the nickel-coated aluminum powder in air. The difference between coated and un-coated aluminum powder, the effectiveness of coated powder has better ignitability.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2009.06a
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• pp.444-445
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• 2009

The metallic contact system of silicon solar cell must have several properties, such as low contact resistance, easy application and good adhesion. Ni is shown to be a suitable barrier to Cu diffusion as well as desirable contact metal to silicon. Nickel monosilicide(NiSi) has been suggested as a suitable silicide due to its lower resistivity, lower sintering temperature and lower layer stress than $TiSi_2$. Copper and Silver can be plated by electro & light-induced plating method. Light-induced plating makes use the photovoltaic effect of solar cell to deposit the metal on the front contact. The cell is immersed into the electrolytic plating bath and irradiated at the front side by light source, which leads to a current density in the front side grid. Electroless plated Ni/ Electro&light-induced plated Cu/ Light-induced plated Ag contact solar cells result in an energy conversion efficiency of 16.446 % on $0.2\sim0.6\;{\Omega}{\cdot}cm$, $20\;\times\;20\;mm^2$, CZ(Czochralski) wafer.

• Journal of the Korean institute of surface engineering
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.92-108
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• 1986

An electroplating on the lead frame fabricated from domestic copper plate was studied experimentally. In this study, nickel was plated on the thin copper lead frame and silver layer was coated on the nickel film in the cyanide electrolyte. The effect of process variables such as current density, plating time, coating thickness and flow rate of electrolytic solution on the properties of coating was investigated. Some samples on each step were fabricated during electroplating. The results obtained from polarization measurement, observation of SEM photograph, adhesion test of coating and microhardness test are as follows. On silver plating, polarization resistance of potentiostatic cathodic polarization curve is reduced as the flow rate of Ag electrolytic solution increases. And above resistance is also reduced when the minor chemicals of sodium cyanide and sodium carbonate are added in potassium silver cyanide bath. The reduced polarization resistance makes silver deposition on the cathode easy. An increase in the current density and the coating thickness causes the particle size of deposit to coarsen, and consequently the Knoop microhardness of the coating decreases. On selective plating an increase in the flow rate of plating solution lead to do high speed plating with high current density. In this case, the surface morphology of deposit is of fine microstructure with high Knoop hardness. An increasing trend of the adhesion of coating was shown with increasing the current density and flow rate of electrolytic solution.

• 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.

• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.174-177
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• 2010

We have developed an environment-friendly etching process, an alternative to the dichromic acid etching process, as a pretreatment of acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) plastic for electroless plating. In order to plate ABS plastic in an electroless way, there should be fine holes on the surface of the ABS plastic to enhance mechanically the adhesion strength between the plastic surface and the plate. To make these holes, the surface was coated uniformly with dispersed chemical foaming agents in a mixture of environmentally friendly dispersant and solvent by the methods of dipping or direct application. The solvent seeps into just below the surface and distributes the chemical foaming agents uniformly beneath the surface. After drying off the surface, the surface was heated at a temperature well below the glass transition temperature of ABS plastic. By pyrolysis, the chemical foaming agents made fine holes on the surface. In order to discover optimum conditions for the formation of fine holes, the mixing ratio of the solvent, the dispersant and the chemical foaming agent were controlled. After the etching process, the surface was plated with nickel. We tested the adhesion strength between the ABS plastic and nickel plate by the cross-cutting method. The surface morphologies of the ABS plastic before and after the etching process were observed by means of a scanning electron microscope.

• Journal of the Korean institute of surface engineering
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.121-126
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• 1993

In this study, a user-friendly expert system is developed for bright nickel plating processes which have a number of influence factors related to the plating quality. Because the mutual relations between these factors in the processes are not quantitatively identified, the expert system deals mainly with the troubleshooting process problems by using the production rule which is able to utilize effectively the qualitatives knowledge and the accumulated experience. Especially, to provide the system user with more timely and convenient informations about the cause of problem symptom and the corresponding countermeasure, it is introduced the interactive user interface using the Korean language. Also the knowledge base and inference engine of the expert system are completely separated, so that the substance of knowledge base can be easily updated and extended.

• Journal of the Korean institute of surface engineering
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• v.37 no.6
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• pp.335-343
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• 2004

Bath stabilizers in the electroless nickel(EN) plating solution are known to prevent sudden bath decomposition and extend its lifetime. Further, every stabilizer has a different role and function in EN solution and it influences the surface structure. In this study, the effects of various stabilizers on the deposition rate, surface morphology, deposition content of phosphor and hardness were investigated.

• Journal of Powder Materials
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.242-247
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• 2017

In this study, the electroless nickel plating method has been investigated for the coating of Ni nanoparticles onto fine Al powder as promising energetic materials. The adsorption of nickel nanoparticles onto the surface of Al powders has been studied by varying various process parameters, namely, the amounts of reducing agent, complexing agent, and pH-controller. The size of nickel nanoparticles synthesized in the process has been optimized to approximately 200 nm and they have been adsorbed on the Al powder. TGA results clearly show that the temperature at which oxidation of Al mainly occurs is lowered as the amount of Ni nanoparticles on the Al surface increases. Furthermore, the Ni-plated Al powders prepared for all conditions show improved exothermic reaction due to the self-propagating high-temperature synthesis (SHS) between Ni and Al. Therefore, Al powders fully coated by Ni nanoparticles show the highest exothermic reactivity: this demonstrates the efficiency of Ni coating in improving the energetic properties of Al powders.

• Particle and aerosol research
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.177-182
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• 2014

In this study, nickel-coated aluminum (Ni/Al) powders were synthesized for the utilization of energetic applications. Oxide materials present at the surface of Al powders of $45{\mu}m$ in averaged size were removed by using sodium hydroxide(NaOH) solution which is used for controlling pH. Nickel material is coated into the surface of oxide-removed Al powders by electroless-plating process. The microstructure of fabricated Ni/Al powders shows that nickel layers with a few hundreds nm were very homogeneously formed onto the surface of Al powders. The oxidation behavior of Ni/Al exihibit somewhat faster oxidation rate than that of pure Al with surface oxidation. Also, the higher exothermic reaction was observed from the Ni/Al powders. From the result of this, nickel coating is very promising method to obtain highly reactive and safe Al powders for energetic applications.