Chloride Contamination and Electroless Nickel
Can chloride contamination of an electroless nickel plating bath result in a poor deposit? The chloride ion is being dragged in from a prior nickel chloride strike.
Q. Can chloride contamination of an electroless nickel plating bath result in a poor deposit? The chloride ion is being dragged in from a prior nickel chloride strike. P. C.
A. I am not aware of any papers that suggest that chloride ion will harm an electroless nickel deposit. In fact, the first electroless nickel plating baths developed by Brenner and Riddell used nickel chloride as the source of nickel ions.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that excessive chloride ion concentration will not cause problems. You did not state in your e-mail what the concentration of chloride ion is in your plating bath. I cannot suggest an upper limit for chloride ion concentration but perhaps one of our readers can.
What you should do is work on your dragout problem. Perhaps you can solve this dragout problem adding another rinse station and/or improving your rinse process.
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