Chemical and Materials Engineering 8(1): 1-6, 2021 http://www.hrpub.org DOI: 10.13189/cme.2021.080101 An Experimental Study on Electroless Nickel Plating on Alumina Ceramic R. K. Gupta 1,* , Anjali Nihore 2 , P. Ram Sankar 1 , P. Ganesh 1 , R. Kaul 1 1 Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology, Indore- 452013, MP, India 2 Project Student SGSITS Indore, MP, India Received December 4, 2020; Revised January 22, 2021; Accepted February 24, 2021 Cite This Paper in the following Citation Styles (a): [1] R.K. Gupta, Anjali Nihore, P. Ram Sankar, P. Ganesh, R. Kaul , "An Experimental Study on Electroless Nickel Plating on Alumina Ceramic," Chemical and Materials Engineering, Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 1 - 6, 2021. DOI: 10.13189/cme.2021.080101. (b): R.K. Gupta, Anjali Nihore, P. Ram Sankar, P. Ganesh, R. Kaul (2021). An Experimental Study on Electroless Nickel Plating on Alumina Ceramic. Chemical and Materials Engineering, 8(1), 1 - 6. DOI: 10.13189/cme.2021.080101. Copyright©2021 by authors, all rights reserved. Authors agree that this article remains permanently open access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International License Abstract In this paper a low temperature metallization i.e. standardization of electroless Ni plating on alumina ceramic is summarized. It includes three main steps (i) pre-treatment, (ii) activation and (iii) Ni plating. Pre-treatment includes degreasing with non-silicate soap solution followed by ultrasonic cleaning in acetone and etching the alumina surface to generate roughness for making it suitable for adhesion. Etching has been obtained by immersion in 10% NaOH at 50°C for 10 minutes and 50% HF for 15 minutes at room temperature. Activation of the surface is the most important step before electroless plating on alumina ceramic. Activation has been achieved with Ginplate 442 (commercial chemical) by immersing the alumina specimen for 5 minutes at room temperature. Activated alumina samples have been used for electroless Ni plating in Ginplate 418 bath at 88°C.Uniform, densely compact coating has been achieved as revealed by SEM image. XRD plot confirms the presence of metallic nickel together with phases of Ni 2 P, NiP, Ni 3 P confirming the nickel phosphite based plating. Subsequently, tube to tube joining of these metallized alumina ceramic tubes has been conducted through vacuum brazing process with copper silver eutectic alloy (28Cu-72Ag) whose cross section showed good joint with excellent wettability of Cu-Ag with Ni plating. Keywords Low Temperature Metallization, Electroless Nickel Plating, Pre-treatment, Activation 1. Introduction Electroless nickel is a coating used for engineering purposes, normally used because of excellent corrosion and wear resistance. Electroless metal based plating is generally used to deposit the metal without applying potential or electric current. Hot acid hypophosphite based baths are mostly used to plate steel and other metals, whereas warm alkaline hypophosphite based baths are used for plating plastic material and non-metallic ceramics. Electroless nickel deposition is also used on aluminum substrates to provide a solderable surface and is used with molds and dies to improve lubricating properties. Due to these properties, electroless nickel plating got many important applications, including those in petrochemical, chemical application, ceramic plastics, optics purpose, printing, mining, aerospace industry, automotive industry, electronics use, computers/laptops, textiles industry, paper and food machinery parts [1]. Electroless Ni plating has many advantages like uniform plating, solder ability and braze ability with some limitations like less adherence, plating rate not so fast as compared to electroplating. Plastic material and ceramics insulator material need proper and suitable cleaning/pre-treatment for metallic depostion using electroless bath [2]. The microstructures and other properties of electroless Ni coating which is in the form of of Ni-P (EN) depend on the phosphorous content alloyed in the deposit [3,4]. The mechanical and tribological properties of these coatings can be further tailored by adding hard particles [5], thermal treatment [3,6] and some dry lubricants [7,8]. High purity alumina