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Plating onto LCP & COC Engineering Plastics

Q. Dear Community Members,

We are currently engaged in electroless copper and electroless nickel plating on LCP materials used in electronic components. However, we have encountered several challenges after the EN process.

Bubble, Peeling Off and Yellow Stains

We kindly request insights and solutions from experts in the field. If you have experience with LCP plating or have successfully resolved similar issues, please share your expertise.

Your valuable input will greatly assist us in enhancing our plating processes. Thank you in advance for your assistance!

SP Liu
Employee - Malaysia Johor
May 30, 2024

A. Hi Liu,
I have no experience in plating of Liquid Crystalline Polymers, but good adhesion of electroless plating requires etching of the substrate. What are you doing for etching? Is your LCP conductive, or what are you doing to metallize the surface?

Electroless nickel can tend to tarnish (turn yellow), so anti-tarnish post treatments are sometimes applied.

Luck & Regards,

pic of Ted Mooney
Ted Mooney, P.E. RET
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey

⇩ Related postings, oldest first ⇩

Acronyms:
COC = cyclic olefin copolymer
LCP = liquid crystal polymer

RFQ: I am designing a part that requires a Ni (or Cr) plating on a plastic substrate. I am currently considering either a COC or LCP plastic (will consider others but have stringent requirements) The application requires a reflective surface -- 1 µm is more than enough, also need the vapor barrier so thicker is desirable. The parts need to stand up to standard rel testing 85%RH 85 °C thermal cycling -40 °C to 85 °C. These are very small parts (about 10 mm x 6 mm x 4 mm) right now I need to make a couple of hundreds, we hope to get up to thousands per month when we go to production with the part.

I'm looking for a job shop experienced with these or similar materials.

Michael Martin
OEM Laser Diode Produces - Madison, Wisconsin, USA
November 15, 2009

Ed. note: Sorry, this RFQ is old & outdated, so contact info is no longer available. However, if you feel that something technical should be said in reply, please post it; no public commercial suggestions please ( huh? why?)

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