A customer inquired that during the production process of using elestroless nickel plating solution, the chemical nickel coating on the workpiece may experience embrittlement, which has affected the performance and quality of the workpiece coating. What is the reason for this?
Based on on-site experience and analysis of the Ni-809 characteristics of the product's elestroless nickel plating solution, Bigley Technology has summarized two reasons for the brittleness of the workpiece's chemical nickel coating:
1. The thickness of the chemical nickel coating is too thick. The thickness of general chemical nickel coating shall not exceed 35 μ At m, the toughness of the coating is good, and the coating is not prone to embrittlement, blistering, or peeling; But when the coating is greater than 40 μ When m is reached, the toughness and brittleness of the coating are poor, especially at the sharp corners of the workpiece edge, which is prone to peeling. This type of workpiece with thick coating has only a small amount of small bubbles or no bubbles in the coating after chemical nickel plating. After a few days of storage, the coating will show small bubbles or the small bubbles will become larger bubbles.
2. Hydrogen embrittlement occurs in the chemical nickel coating. When the workpiece is plated with chemical nickel, there will be hydrogen permeation in the coating. When the coating is suitable and there are a small amount of pores, atomic hydrogen enters the coating and interacts to form hydrogen gas, which is slowly released. When the coating thickness is thick and there are basically no pores, hydrogen gas is not easily released, and brittle and bubbling phenomena will occur in areas with thin coating or poor adhesion of the coating. When the hydrogen permeation of the workpiece is severe, there is no need for external stress, and the coating is prone to brittle cracking. Therefore, Bigley suggests that customers should undergo hydrogen removal treatment after plating the workpiece with chemical nickel to reduce the phenomenon of hydrogen permeation.
Therefore, we should pay attention to the above two points in the production process of using elestroless nickel plating solution, which can effectively avoid the phenomenon of embrittlement in the chemical nickel coating of the workpiece and reduce the occurrence of faults. If you are interested in elestroless nickel plating additive, please contact Bigley customer service to obtain free samples and detailed technical information!
If you want to learn more about chemical nickel plating, you can check out "Industry News".
