Copper plating

Copper plating often applied as relatively thick undercoat serves a number of purposes. The copper layer provides “levelling” resulting in the suppression of substrate defects and providing a smooth, bright uniform underlayer for subsequent nickel/chrome deposition. It provides a relatively ductile layer which is essential in thermal cycling allowing “forgiveness” for the coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) mismatch between various metal layers and/or between plastic substrates and metal overlayers. The copper layer is also a diffusion barrier especially when deposited on die-cast zinc alloys to inhibit inter-diffusion of metals and thus maintain the integrity of the system, and is an “anchor” that promotes adhesion on certain difficult-to-plate metals and plating on plastics. Auromex offers a number of acid and alkaline copper plating process for metal and plastics substrates as shown in the table below.