Nickel multilayers and their effects on bend fatigue strength of leads

Nickel is commonly coated on the outer leads for T8 metal package. The leads electrodeposited by conventional dull or bright nickel over 5 μm at direct current from Watt bath are hard to pass the bend fatigue test for three times. Nickel electrodeposited at multi waveform current including direct current, single and double pulse from sulfamate bath can improve the bend fatigue strength of leads. Such nickel plating has a multilayer structure, its morphology of sublayers can be clearly seen in its cross section with SEM. The electrochemical study shows that these sublayers have different corrosion potentials. The bend fatigue test of leads with such plating for T8 metal package shows that the number of bend increases with the decrease of average current density of multi waveform, which can be attributed to the reduction of every sublayer thickness and the increase of layer numbers under the same condition of total thickness.

Nickel multilayers and their effects on bend fatigue strength of leads

Nickel is commonly coated on the outer leads for T8 metal package. The leads electrodeposited by conventional dull or bright nickel over 5 μm at direct current from Watt bath are hard to pass the bend fatigue test for three times. Nickel electrodeposited at multi waveform current including direct current, single and double pulse from sulfamate bath can improve the bend fatigue strength of leads. Such nickel plating has a multilayer structure, its morphology of sublayers can be clearly seen in its cross section with SEM. The electrochemical study shows that these sublayers have different corrosion potentials. The bend fatigue test of leads with such plating for T8 metal package shows that the number of bend increases with the decrease of average current density of multi waveform, which can be attributed to the reduction of every sublayer thickness and the increase of layer numbers under the same condition of total thickness.