A novel process of electroless nickel plating on PVC with semi-IPN hydrogel pretreatment

摘要

A novel environmentally friendly surface activation process of electroless nickel plating on the poly( vinyl chloride) (PVC) surface was developed. This process is applying a semi-Interpenetrating Polymer Net work (semi-IPN) hydrogel biopolymer to modify the PVC surface by the chemical method. The hydro-philic semi-IPN hydrogel film with abundant amino groups, which could effectively chemisorb palladium ions prior to the subsequent electroless nickel plating onto the PVC substrate surface was fast obtained after pretreatment. The activated reaction progress and resulting Ni-P layer were characterized by attenuated total reflection fourier transform infrared (ATR FTIR), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray diffrac tion (XRD). The results show that electroless nickel plating was successfully initiated by the palladium nanoparticles formed on the PVC surface. A uniform, compact and continuous layer with an amorphous structure was obtained by using this process.