New Auto-Levelling Process for Electroplating

To those skilled in the art of electroplating, the process is known to be just that: an art. Nevertheless, electroplating is used for a broad variety of applications from various forms of decorative finishing to the plating of high technology devices such as intricate printed circuit boards and magnetic disks for hard disk drives.In fact, the plating of such high tech devices pose numerous problems for the manufacturer. High current densities often produce excessive thicknesses of plated deposits or outright defects. Very severe potential problems occur especially in the plating of magnetic disks where the slightest imperfections can cause rejections of an entire batch of parts. Many such defects arise for no apparent reason but are often attributable to random plating imperfections.Researchers at Arizona State University have developed a new plating process and electrolyte composition whereby exceptionally smooth homoepitaxial & heteroepitaxial layers of metal can be electrolytically deposited on a metal substrate. A novel feature of this process is that levelling of the deposit automatically occurs at the atomic level thus producing virtually perfect deposits. This process is uniquely applicable to plating of high-tech devices and components a few of which are mentioned above.