Investigation on catalytic effectiveness of colloidal Pd-PVA with graphene coating process as a pre-treatment for electroless plating

Abstract

This study uses Palladium-Polyvinyl Alcohol (Pd-PVA) as the catalyst for electroless nickel plating (ENP) on a non-conducting substrate to investigate its catalytic effect where a layer of graphene would also be used to form a conducting nanofilm the non-conducting substrate. The experiments conducted in the study include a graphene coating process, a catalyzing process using Palladium Chloride (II) solution, and an ENP process. The basic design of this study was to compare ENP characteristics between two sets of samples, first control set with palladium chemically reduced by sodium hypophosphite and Pd-PVA, second experimental set with graphene coating process as a pre-treatment. Two major factors were used in the analysis of the catalytic effectiveness which is the ENP results, and catalyst loading on the substrate.