Assisted Electroless Plating Research Articles

Preparation of Pd/Ag Film on Porous Ceramic Tube by Osmosis Pressure–Assisted Electroless Plating

The osmosis pressure was introduced to improve the conventional electroless plating process for preparing porous ceramic supported Pd/Ag inorganic composite membrane. The effects of temperature (t), molar ratio of hydrazine to total metal ions(y), molar ratio of silver ions to palladium ions(x), concentrations of ethylene diamine tetraacetic acid (EDTA) and sucrose solution on the metal deposition rate, silver content in alloy film, surface morphology of film and permeation properties of the membrane were investigated and their optimal conditions were determined to be: [MET]=5mM, x = 20%, y = 1, [EDTA] = 40g•L-1, t = 40 °C, pH =11 and sucrose solution concentration of 6 M. Under these optimal conditions, the prepared Pd/Ag alloy film with thickness of 7.9 μm demonstrated good permeation properties with nitrogen free and hydrogen permeation rate of 8.8×10-3m3•m-2•s-1at 0.3 MPa and 473 K.

Investigations on Pr 1.6Sr 0.4NiO 4–YSZ–Ag composite cathode for solid oxide fuel cells

Ag-network was successfully deposited by VA-EP (vacuum assisted electroless plating) method on Pr 1.6Sr 0.4NiO 4–YSZ cathode to form (1− x) wt% Pr 1.6Sr 0.4NiO 4− x wt% YSZ–Ag ( x=0, 10, 20, 30, 40) (abbr. PY x-Ag) composite cathode. XRD results suggested that there was a good chemical stability between Pr 1.6Sr 0.4NiO 4 and YSZ at temperatures below 1050 °C. PY20-Ag cathode exhibited higher exchange current density, lower overpotential and ASR (Area Specific Resistance) than PY20 cathode. At 650 °C, the ASR of PY20-Ag cathode was 2.5 Ω cm 2, which was only about 42% of that of PY20, 5.9 Ω cm 2. PY20-Ag can be a promising candidate for SOFC cathode.

Supercritical carbon dioxide assisted electroless plating on thermoplastic polymers

An environmentally benign electroless plating process on thermoplastic polymers, which could significantly reduce harmful acids necessary for conventional process, was developed. The process consists of two steps, i.e., supercritical CO 2 impregnation and electroless plating reaction in the presence of ethanol and CO 2. In the scCO 2 impregnation step, a Pd precursor, which is used as a catalyst for electroless plating reaction, is infused into polymer by taking advantage of solvency and plasticization powers of scCO 2. Then, the polymer containing Pd is immersed in a Ni–P plating solution to conduct the electroless plating reaction. Ethanol and CO 2 are added into the solution to enhance solvency of the solution in polymer. A composite layer of Ni–P alloy is formed at the interface between metal and polymer substrate. This provides strong adhesiveness of Ni–P alloy film to the polymer substrates.

Novel in situ method (vacuum assisted electroless plating) modified porous cathode for solid oxide fuel cells

A novel in situ method – vacuum assisted electroless plating (VA–EP) is developed to modify the porous structure of various materials. The advantage of this method is it can form a metal network based on the already-given structure. We utilize this method to deposit silver (VA–EPA) in porous perovskite cathode Ba 0.5Sr 0.5Co 0.8Fe 0.2O 3− δ (BSCF) for an intermediate temperature solid oxide fuel cell (IT–SOFC) in the present research. The results of investigation show the performance of the modified cathode (VA–EPA–BSCF) enhances greatly, for example, the polarization resistance of VA–EPA–BSCF decreases by 60% at 600 °C compared to BSCF.