Technic to Present at SUR/FIN 2018: Beyond Ni/Au

Rob Schetty, Vice President, Technic Advanced Technology Division, will be presenting Beyond Ni/Au: Next Generation Corrosion-Resistant Finishes for Electronics Applications at SUR/FIN 2018. The presentation is scheduled for Tuesday, June 5th at the Huntington Convention Center in Cleveland, Ohio.

One of the major functions of electroplated coatings is to increase the corrosion-resistance of the substrate and/or other layers that the coating is being applied to. This is extremely important in electronics applications where increasing demands on reliability require improved corrosion protection. The industry standard conventional electroplated nickel plus hard gold, which has served many portions of the electronics plating industry well for several decades, is now being replaced by alternatives in several applications in order to satisfy these new requirements.

Increasing the corrosion-resistance of an electroplated electronic device can be achieved through several different means: (1) modifying the composition and/or thickness of the functional final finish; (2) implementing a more robust barrier layer or layers between the substrate and the final finish; (3) application of a post-treatment process on top of the final finish. Each of these methods has its own set of benefits and disadvantages, particularly with regard to the ever-present cost constraints in place for each application.

Rob’s presentation will cover several next-generation approaches to increasing the corrosion-resistance of electroplated articles using each of the three methods outlined above.