Plating Electroless Nickel onto Nylon or Plastic

A. Hi Linda, hi Kurt. Electroless nickel is more properly called 'auto-catalytic nickel', which means that it will plate out onto nickel, as well as some other metals like steel. Which is to say that you must metallize the nylon first; you can't just dip nylon into an electroless nickel solution, because nothing good will happen. So, how did you get the initial layer of electroless nickel to deposit onto the nylon, Linda?

Please see our FAQs for a quick intro., then check your university library for a copy of "Standards and Guidelines for Electroplated Plastics" by the American Society for Electroplated Plastics and "Electroless Plating" by Mallory & Hajdu [on eBay , Amazon, or AbeBooks] .

I'm sure our readers will be happy to answer any specific questions you have, but they aren't able to summarize how to do electroless nickel plating onto nylon in a paragraph or two because it starts with cleaning the plastic properly, then etching it right, then depositing palladium chloride and then tin chloride solutions to form a good seed layer, all before a properly formulated and operated electroless nickel step. Good luck!

A. Hi Diwakar. Plating is far from impossible; people do it every day.

But the assumption that you can start right into plating on exceptionally difficult substrates, while also formulating your own homemade electroless nickel plating solution is quite a stretch -- it's rather like telling the music teacher that you've never played a piano but want to do some Franz Liszt compositions for the Holiday Concert. The music teacher would tell you to start by practicing some scales, and I need to tell you to start by doing some electroless nickel plating onto a steel substrate with a commercially bought electroless nickel solution first :-(

I believe that the stainless steel will prove plateable but that you'll need to clarify what you expect of that woven nylon. If you need air and/or liquids to be able to flow through it after it's plated, that could be a problem. Will exposed nylon be an issue for your process. Must it be nylon, which exhibits poor resistance to low pH compared to some other plastics? Good luck.

Regards,