Effect of Plating Additives on Microstructure and Properties of Electrodeposited Ni-Fe Alloy Thin Film

With the evolving technology, the frame mounted design of electronic components has increasingly become high-density, which leads to the electronic elements that are inevitably vulnerable to electromagnetic interference and then affect other electronic products’ functions. The solution is to use well conductive material that operates the shielding process. The material includes metals and conductive polymers which are common sources of the protective materials in dealing with the main conductive surface. Although this masking method has been widely recognized, several problems are still observed in practice, including the vulnerability to scaling, abrasion, corrosion and process load.

In this study, we adopt Fe-Ni alloy film as the shielding material and manufacture it by  electroplating. We intend to explore the effectiveness of changing the plating bath composition, plating parameter and plating additives on structural strength and magnetic properties of the Fe-Ni alloy film. Different proportions of nickel and iron ion concentration and content of H₃BO₃ cause different proportions of electrodeposited elements in the film. And the higher content of nickel ion will have higher permeability. In magnetic electroplating, plating additives play an important role. The findings suggest that various additives lead to different crystalline orientations, grain sizes, surface roughness. A strong correlation is also shown between the observed structural changes and the changes in the magnetic properties, such as permeability. Additionally, anti-corrosion is a significant issue. We can improve the corrosion problem by doping little element such as Boron in the film, obtain the corrosion potential and corrosion current by Tafel analysis. The ultimate goal of the study is to meet the requirements of electronic industry in manufacturing high permeability and optimum corrosion resistance for shielding material Fe-Ni alloy film.