Electroplating/plating/electrodeposition is a process where a metallic coating is produced on a conductive substrate (e.g. workpiece, foil, wafer etc.) by submerging the substrate in an ionic solution (electrolyte) containing metal ions and imposing an electrical current onto it. Also non-conductive substrates (e.g. plastic foils) can be plated, provided that a conductive seed layer (typically << 1 micron thickness) is deposited first by a non-electrochemical method.

Commonly used processes include chrome, nickel, zinc, copper, tin and gold plating. The purpose of applying a metal layer on a substrate can be manyfold: wear resistance (e.g. hard chrome or nickel layer), corrosion resistance (e.g. zinc layer), enhanced electrical conductivity (e.g. copper and gold plating), decorative aspects (e.g. chrome layer), etc.

Often the layer characteristics are improved by alloy plating or dispersion plating. Alloy plating for example enables producing cobalt/iron/nickel layers with magnetic properties, to be used for recording heads of information carriers. Dispersion plating enables to incorporate solid particles (with micron or submicron scale dimensions) in the deposit, producing very hard and wear resistant layers (e.g. nickel layer with silicium carbide or diamond particles) or self-lubrificating layers (e.g. nickel layer with carbon particles).

Depending on the plating process specifications, the plating tank might consist of a simple barrel with a high load of particles (e.g. screws), a rack containing a few up to several hundreds of workpieces (e.g. shower taps, PCB’s, door handles) or a dedicated configuration for plating one substrate at a time (e.g. wafers, shafts, combustion cylinders).

Most plating applications run with a DC rectifier, but some high end processes use (bipolar) pulsed currents, e.g. some wafer and PCB plating processes. Typical layer thicknesses produced with a plating process range from some microns up to 500 micron.

Controlling and optimizing the layer thickness distribution and quality of the metal deposit is a major challenge for many plating processes. For this purpose, Elsyca developed the following simulation tools: Elsyca PlatingMaster, Elsy2D, Pirode.