저널

An electroplating on the lead frame fabricated from domestic copper plate was studied experimentally. In this study, nickel was plated on the thin copper lead frame and silver layer was coated on the nickel film in the cyanide electrolyte. The effect of process variables such as current density, plating time, coating thickness and flow rate of electrolytic solution on the properties of coating was investigated. Some samples on each step were fabricated during electroplating. The results obtained from polarization measurement, observation of SEM photograph, adhesion test of coating and microhardness test are as follows. On silver plating, polarization resistance of potentiostatic cathodic polarization curve is reduced as the flow rate of Ag electrolytic solution increases. And above resistance is also reduced when the minor chemicals of sodium cyanide and sodium carbonate are added in potassium silver cyanide bath. The reduced polarization resistance makes silver deposition on the cathode easy. An increase in the current density and the coating thickness causes the particle size of deposit to coarsen, and consequently the Knoop microhardness of the coating decreases. On selective plating an increase in the flow rate of plating solution lead to do high speed plating with high current density. In this case, the surface morphology of deposit is of fine microstructure with high Knoop hardness. An increasing trend of the adhesion of coating was shown with increasing the current density and flow rate of electrolytic solution.