ABSTRACT
The activation of nonconducting materials by the deposition of metalcontaining polymer films could improve the autocatalytic metallization process by eliminating the aqueous etching and sensitizing steps. In addition, substrates that are hard to etch and activate by the aqueous process could be plated by this technique.
If the film, layered by the plasma polymerization technique, is sufficiently conductive and adheres to the substrate, direct electroplating can be performed. This simplifies the conventional process even further by removing the necessity of several presteps such as etching, neutralization, catalyzing, acceleration, and electroless plating. Five different process schemes were tried to further investigate the effectiveness of
