Sound technical content, curated with aloha by
Ted Mooney, P.E. RET
Pine Beach, NJ
The authoritative public forum
for Metal Finishing since 1989
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Process for gold plating over copper
Can you suggest any good chemistry or process that can plate 2 to 3 microns of gold over copper on PCBs.
Manager - Hyderabad
November 10, 2011
Magnetron sputtering can do it.
H.R. Prabhakara - ConsultantBangalore Plasmatek - Bangalore Karnataka India
November 10, 2011
Gold and copper together will interdiffuse over time. You need an intermediate layer of nickel to avoid this.
G. Marrufo
Monterrey, NL, Mexico
November 17, 2011
November 21, 2011
There are many reasons why you might plate gold on PCBs
From the thickness you give, my guess is that you intend to use it for edge connectors.
Pure gold is far too soft for that application and the normal specs require acid hard gold over nickel.
There are two common types of gold plating for this, hardened with very small amounts of either cobalt or nickel. These are added as complex chemicals which are proprietary and it is unlikely that you could prepare them yourself or afford the many months of development and testing which goes into a successful process.
Almost all of the supply houses which sell gold salts will advise you on the best process for your needs.
You may find customers reluctant to risk buying PCBs for expensive equipment made by home brew chemicals.
You should also know that it is common to specify thickness and permissible porosity of the gold. You will need to have the equipment and knowledge to test for these.
Geoff Smith
Hampshire, England
November 28, 2011
Joginatham,
India has become the "universal Hub" for electroplating. Any manufacturer/Supply house of plating chemical from all over the world looking at India as their prospective selling area. Ted will not allow me to give any names!! But you can just go to the web and search and ask them to give you the address in India..U will get it.. Even in Hyderabad there are some...All the best..
T.K. Mohan
plating process supplier - Mumbai, India
Hi, T K. We appreciate your contributions, but the site is made possible for camaraderie & technical information exchange by supporting advertisers. The idea that they should be willing to pay for postings steering the potential customers towards their competitors is strange. Your company chooses not to advertise here; if they change their mind, we'll count their vote as in favor of the idea :-)
I looked on your website for a recommendation of a competitor's product and came up empty, so I hardly think that people will open-mindedly recommend their competitors' products here. Would you have suggested Hyderabad if your company lacked distributorship there? We receive dozens of postings from China every day suggesting that everyone buy their plating processes from them instead of India, and decline to print that stuff, too. This site is far from perfect, but would not be improved by letting people promote their proprietary products in their responses here in lieu of by advertisement. Thanks for your understanding and your excellent postings.
Regards,
Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
November 28, 2011
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