Low temperature electroless nickel plating

摘要

Nickel is electrolessly plated on cleaned pretreated catalytically coated non-conductive material, such as glass, ceramic or acrylonitrile-butadiene-styren copolymer plastic, by treating the material with a solution containing nickel, ammonium and hypophosphite ions, and free from chloride or sulphate ions, having pH of at least 8 at 70-140 DEG F. The ions may be provided by directly dissolving nickel ammonium hypophosphite complex, or by supplementing nickel ammonium glycolate solution with ammonium hypophosphite, and maintaining the pH with excess NH4OH. The solution may be regenerated by reacting NiCo3 or Ni(OH)2 with ammonium hypophosphite or glycolate. The catalytic coating is prefarably an adherent deposit of Pd formed on an initially cleaned, delustered or etched (e.g. with CrO3) surface. The Ni plated material may be subsequently electro-plated.