Study On Pretreatment Process And Technological Parameters For Electroless Nickel Plating On ITO Conductive Glass

The ITO(indium tin oxide) transparent conductor is an important opto-electronic multi-function film. It is widely used in flat panel displays, organic light emitting diodes, and most of the thin film solar cells, etc. But the high resistance and complex circuit design of ITO conductive glass limits its scale-up application. Selective electroless plating nickel on the surface of ITO conductive glass is an efficient way which can reduce the resistance significantly. However, the weak Adhesion between coating and substrate as well as selectivity of the deposition on the surface obviously reduces the overall performance, which needs to be solved urgently.In this thesis, ITO conductive glass is used as the research material. A technique of pretreatment process is developed in order to obtain a basic coating with good selectivity. Acidic electroless nickel plating is implemented on the ITO in order to obtain a coating with adhesion finally.Pretreatment process before electroless nickel plating was studied in this paper. Nickel layer was researched by Visual appearance, Binding force test, SEM and EDS. Experiemntal results demonstrated that among these different etching solutions phosphoric acid-based solution can lead to a uniform surface. On the other hand, among these different catalytic liquids succinic acid can result into a light layer. In addition, the exact parameters are further determined through studying the effects of reaction times, temperatures, concertrations on etching, catalysis and activitation performance, respectively, and observing the layer morphology and interaction. Based on these optimal parameters, a perfect layer can be achived.The effects of technological parameters on the coating have been investigated. The best electroless nickel technology is chosen by comparison. The optimal conditions can be obtained from the contrast experiment over despostion speed, layer morphology, cover ratio and interactions. As a result, well-interacted layer with low sheet resistance can be facily prepared.The process can obtain the coating with good adhesion and selectivity. The test of heat treatment shows that controlling the temperature at 530 oC can get a flat plating layer with particle uniformity.