Electroplating can generally be divided into the following categories.

1. vapour plating: surface adhesion.
2. Sputter plating: surface exchange.
3. Water plating: molecular bonding

Both vapor deposition and sputtering are used to deposit various metal and non-metal films on the surface of plastic parts under vacuum conditions by distillation or sputtering, etc. In this way, a very thin surface coating can be obtained, while having the outstanding advantage of fast adhesion. Vacuum vapor deposition is a method of heating the metal under high vacuum, making it melt and evaporate, and then forming a metal film on the surface of the sample after cooling, and the metal used for vapor deposition is Al, gold, etc.

difference between these different plating methods in terms of electrical conductivity:

General electroplating, that is, water plating, water plating is conductive, vacuum plating now has a discontinuous coating can not conductive surface adhesion and wear resistance performance how? Because electroplating is generally used as the surface (appearance surface), sputtering is mainly to do the inner surface (anti-EMI, there are also small keys to do surface treatment, like some keys) relatively thicker water plating film thickness of about 0.01-0.02MM, vacuum sputtering film thickness of about 0.005MM, plating wear resistance and adhesion are relatively good.

Vacuum sputtering:

The main use of glow discharge (glow discharge) will be argon (Ar) ions hit the target (target) surface, the target atoms are ejected and stacked on the surface of the substrate to form a thin film. The properties and uniformity of sputtering films are better than evaporation films, but the coating speed is much slower than evaporation. New sputtering equipment almost all use powerful magnets to accelerate the ionization of argon around the target in a spiral motion, resulting in an increased chance of impact between the target and the argon ions to increase the sputtering rate. The basic principle is to use glow discharge (Glow discharge) in vacuum to hit the target (target) surface with argon ions, the cations in the plasma will accelerate to the surface of the negative electrode as the sputtered material, the impact will make the target material fly out and deposit The impact will cause the target material to fly out and deposit on the substrate to form a thin film.

Generally speaking, there are several characteristics of thin film coating using sputtering process.
(1) Metals, alloys or insulators can be made into thin film materials.
(2) Multiple and complex targets can be made into thin films of the same composition under appropriate setting conditions.
(3) By adding oxygen or other active gases to the discharge atmosphere, a mixture or compound of target material and gas molecules can be made.
(4) The target input current and sputtering time can be controlled, so it is easy to obtain high precision film thickness.
(5) It is better than other processes to produce large area uniform films.
(6) The sputtered particles are not affected by gravity, and the target and substrate can be freely arranged.
(7) The adhesion strength of substrate and film is more than 10 times than that of general vapor deposition, and because of the high energy of sputtering particles, the surface diffusion will continue on the film-forming surface to obtain a hard and dense film, while the high energy enables the substrate to obtain a crystalline film at a low temperature.
(8) High nucleation density at the early stage of film formation, which can produce extremely thin continuous films below 10nm.
(9) Long life time of the target material, and can be produced continuously for a long time automatically.
(10) The target can be made into various shapes for better control and most efficient production with the special design of the machine. The thickness of water plating is thicker than vacuum plating, and the wear resistance is better than real plating.

To sum up, the differences are as follows:

1、Vacuum plating process is environmentally friendly, while water plating has hidden dangers.
2、Vacuum plating process is similar to the baking process, but water plating is different.
3、The adhesion of vacuum plating is higher compared with water plating, and UV should be added.