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Activation and pre-treatment for electroless plating

Dear sir,

I am currently doing electroless Ni/P plating using sodium hypophosphite as reducing agent. I am using mild steel and stainless steel as the substrate (to be coated with nickel).

1)Can I just dip the substrate into a nickel chloride solution to activate it since steel is less noble than nickel and thus allow cementation to occur and activate the steel surface? If this method is wrong, can you suggest a method for its activation?

2)I plan to do electroless Ni/P plating on a sheet of mild steel specimen. However, my specimen is contaminated and rusted. What steps I need for surface pre-treatment?

Thank you very much for your help.

Rocky Wong Kam Yuen
- Ipoh, Perak, Malaysia
2002