A new environmentally friendly non-destructive activation process of electroless nickel plating on alumina ceramics

A new non-destructive activation process before electroless nickel plating (ENP) was proposed, which reduced the use of strong corrosive drugs and noble metals， and was environmentally friendly without damaging the surface of alumina ceramics. The process successfully attached nickel nanoparticles firmly to the alumina ceramic surface and used the nickel nanoparticles as a catalytic center of ENP for electroless plating. The important parameters of the non-destructive activation process were optimized by orthogonal experiments. A scanning electron microscope (SEM), an X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), an energy dispersive spectrometer (EDS) and thermal shock tests were used to characterize and analyzed the surface morphology, microstructure, composition and binding force of the coating, and measured the plating rate and conductivity to analyze the coating quality. The rate of ENP reduced with the decrease of ion concentration. When the plating time was 30 ，60 and 90 min, the average plating rate was 10.93, 10.85 and 8.76 µm/h, respectively. The difference in the square resistance of the coating of different samples was small, indicating that the coating thickness was basically the same. When the coating was applied for 90 min, the coating thickness was about 14.3 µm and the resistivity was about 107.2 × 10−6 Ω·cm, conforming to the international standard of nickel plating with phosphorus. Therefore, the process has advantages of simple operation and low cost, and it is a non-destructive and environmentally friendly activation process for substrates.