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Control of pinhole defects formation in semi-flexible coaxial cable by vertical tin-plating process

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Abstract

Holistic tin-plating on the outer conductor is one of the key processes in the manufacture of semi-flexible coaxial cable, which is widely applied to the third generation (3G) mobile communication system. However, in the traditional horizontal tin-plating process, disadvantages such as the pinhole defects and low productivity effect cannot be avoided. In this paper, a vertical tin-plating process was proposed to reduce the pinhole defects and improve the tin-coating quality. Compared with the traditional horizontal tin-plating process, the immersion length was reduced from 300–400 mm to 10–100 mm and the tin-plating time was reduced from 7 s to 3 s in the proposed method. The experimental results indicate that immersion length and time are key parameters for the tin-plating quality. With this new tin-plating process, the experimental results show that the pinhole defects can be eliminated effectively by controlling the immersion depth below 100 mm and tin-plating time at 3 s. The thickness of tin-coating increased from not more than 5 μm to 12.3 μm with the proposed vertical tin-plating process. Meanwhile, the thickness of the intermetallic compounds (IMCs) layer between the tin-coating and copper wires was reduced from 3.26 μm to 0.62 μm if the immersion time decreased from 30 s to 1 s. Besides, a self-developed flux, which possesses a boiling point or decomposed temperature of active components over 300 °C, exhibits a better efficiency in reducing the pinhole formation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin, 300072, China

    Fangjie Cheng  (程方杰), Xin Xiao  (肖 鑫) & Lijun Yang  (杨立军)

  2. Tianjin Key Laboratory of Advanced Joining Technology, Tianjin, 300072, China

    Fangjie Cheng  (程方杰) & Lijun Yang  (杨立军)

  3. Tianjin Anxunda Ltd, Tianjin, 300457, China

    Guizheng Sun  (孙贵铮) & Fengyu Zhang  (张凤玉)

Authors
  1. Fangjie Cheng  (程方杰)
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  2. Xin Xiao  (肖 鑫)
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  3. Guizheng Sun  (孙贵铮)
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  4. Lijun Yang  (杨立军)
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  5. Fengyu Zhang  (张凤玉)
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Fangjie Cheng  (程方杰).

Additional information

Supported by Science and Technology Support Project of Tianjin Science and Technology Commission (No. 10ZCKFGX3500).

CHENG Fangjie, born in 1971, male, Dr, associate Prof.

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Cheng, F., Xiao, X., Sun, G. et al. Control of pinhole defects formation in semi-flexible coaxial cable by vertical tin-plating process. Trans. Tianjin Univ. 17, 320–323 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12209-011-1603-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12209-011-1603-7

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