A novel strategy for designable alloy coatings in electroless plating

ABSTRACT A novel strategy for the preparation of designable alloy coatings by Al-induced electroless plating combined with thermal diffusion was proposed in the paper. Based on the method, Al-induced electroless plating was used to create multilayer coatings. Thermal diffusion is used to alloy the multilayer coatings to form alloy coatings. This technique can resolve the design problem of alloy coatings in electroless plating. For designable alloy coatings, multilayer coatings were prepared as the basic materials. Thus, the preparation possibility and procedure of multilayer coatings were investigated primarily. However, the multilayer coatings were alloyed by thermal diffusion. The coatings of electroless plating were required to accommodate high temperatures. The preparation methods for coatings have been discussed in this paper to satisfy this condition. The results show that the preparation method of designable alloy coatings by Al-induced electroless plating combined with thermal diffusion is feasible. The coatings prepared by Al-induced electroless plating were suitable for thermal diffusion. During the deposition process, the multilayer coatings were produced in the order of metal activity. Finally, the designed alloy coatings were successfully formed based on the preparation method. Thus, this is a promising approach to overcome the challenges of creating designable alloy coatings in the field of electroless plating and in the composition design of microlattice materials.