An Alternative Electroplating Technology for Mass Finishing of Chip Capacitors and Resistors

摘要

The rapid pace of miniaturization in the electronics and semi-conductor industries has led to the emergence of discreet micro-sized active components such as connector clips and pins and passive surface mounted components such as chip capacitors, resistors and inductors. These components often require electroplating as a finishing step to impart specific corrosion, wear resistance, conductivity and solderability characteristics. However, the size of these components has been reduced so significantly in recent years that conventional means of electroplating are no longer suitable for this purpose. It has even been suggested that the electroplating of these parts is one of the major barriers to further miniaturization. It also must be noted that electroplating of these parts is the final manufacturing step before the parts are shipped to the assemblers. Failure of the parts at this stage due to problems that occurred during electroplating is very costly. Technic has developed a unique patented technology (US 6,193,858) specifically for the electroplating of small parts. The SBE (spouted bed electrode) technology uses a liquid jet to continuously circulate components during the electroplating process. The SBE technology does not suffer from problems associated with conventional barrel plating of small parts, and in fact, the performance of the SBE improves with smaller component sizes. Moreover, the SBE is entirely compatible with the plating operations currently using plating barrels, so the capital investment to adopt the technology is modest.