Pretreatment and deposition process of electroless Ni plating on polyimide film for electronic field applications

• Continuous electroless Ni coating was prepared for metallization of polyimide.
• Alkaline etching and Ni salt activation was adopted to enhance adhesion.
• Orthogonal experiment method was used to optimize the experiment.
• Formation process of Ni nucleus in activated films was characterized and analyzed.
• Tensile test results showed the higher adhesion between polyimide and coatings.

The work is focused on electroless nickel plating on polyimide film. The Ni salt activation, which neglects the use of palladium, is adopted in pretreatment. The orthogonal experiment and single factor test are used to optimize the experiment, thus the optimum compositions and conditions of electroless nickel plating are obtained. The cleaned, activated and deposited polyimide films are also characterized by their structure, morphology, component and chemical state. The activation process of nickel salt is analyzed on basis of experiment and test. A Ni–P film with fine and dense structure is achieved on the polyimide film which consists of 92.23 wt.% Ni and 7.77 wt.% P. The result of tensile test indicates that the adhesion between the substrate and the coating layer is sufficiently excellent due to dimples by etching.

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