Activation of Nonconducting Surfaces for Electroless Plating

To eliminate the possible incorporation of copper oxides into a polymer film, a hydrogen plasma treatment was carried out after the oxygen plasma treatment 

The activation of nonconducting materials by the deposition of metal-containing polymer films could improve the autocatalytic metallization process by eliminating the aqueous etching and sensitizing steps. In addition, substrates that are hard to etch and activate by the aqueous process could be plated by this technique. 

If the film, layered by the plasma polymerization technique, is sufficiently conductive and adheres to the substrate, direct electroplating can be performed. This simplifies the conventional process even further by removing the necessity of several presteps such as etching, neutralization, catalyzing, acceleration, and electroless plating. Five different process schemes were tried to further investigate the effectiveness of 

Substrate/Evaporation Deposited (EVD) Copper or Silver/Electrocopper (EVD Process) 

EVD-copper or silver was deposited at a pressure of 2.1 x 10 Pa as a preplate for electroplating. A commercial unit utilizing a tungsten basket to contain and heat the metal was used. A 150-nm-thick copper or silver layer was obtained and followed by electrodeposition of copper. 

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