Surface coarsening of carbon fiber/cyanate ester composite for adhesion improvement of electroless copper plating as conductive patterns

The surface roughening process of substrates plays a critical role in the pre-treatment of industrial metal deposition. In this work, five different coarsening treatments were applied to coarsen the surface of carbon fiber/cyanate ester composite for improving the quality of subsequent electroless copper plating. The particular effects of coarsening treatments on carbon fiber/cyanate ester are characterized with morphological, chemical and surface tension-based measurements. The results show that coarsening treatments lead to different surface hydrophilicity and morphology for the composites, thus affecting the adhesion, surface roughness and surface morphology of the deposited copper layer. Compared with the other tested coarsening treatments (including sand-grinding, oxidation, air plasma, the combined action involving sand-grinding and air plasma), the combined action involving sand-grinding and oxidation yields the promoted coarsening of the composite and then results in optimized adhesion for the following electroless copper plating as conductive patterns.