Plasma Treatment Process for Palladium Chemisorption onto Polymers before Electroless Deposition

Before electroless plating, polymer surfaces must be sensitized and/or activated by using either the conventional two‐step or one‐step process. The latter stage is a compulsory one to make such surfaces catalytic, e.g. , for Ni‐P deposition. These processes are performed here using , or plasma pretreatments. Reaction mechanisms are proposed for each of the processes and for each type of surface considered (oxygenated or both oxygenated and nitrogenated by the plasma treatment). Direct palladium chemisorption onto nitrogenated groups is highlighted. This allows one to simplify the process making the surface catalytic via elimination of the use of and to extend the method to any polymer. An additional interest of the plasma treatments, besides their high efficiency in grafting chemical functions, is to perform this grafting at will on selected areas which results in selective metallization.