What Impact Does The Plating Process Of Push-type Terminal Connectors Have On Signal Transmission?

The plating process of push wire terminal block has an important influence on the quality of signal transmission. The contact plating mainly adopts precious metal materials such as gold, nickel, and palladium. The selection of these plating layers directly affects the contact resistance, corrosion resistance, and signal integrity.

First, the gold plating process can significantly reduce the contact resistance and ensure the stability of signal transmission due to its excellent conductivity and oxidation resistance. The thickness of the gold plating is usually between 0.05 and 0.5 microns. Too thin may lead to insufficient wear resistance, and the plating will wear after long-term plugging and unplugging, increasing the contact resistance; too thick will increase the cost, but can improve durability.

Secondly, the nickel bottom layer is often used as a transition layer to enhance the adhesion of the plating and prevent the diffusion of the substrate metal, but the resistivity of nickel is high. If the plating is too thick, it may slightly affect the high-frequency signal transmission. Palladium plating has both wear resistance and conductivity, which is suitable for high-frequency applications, but the cost is higher.

In addition, the flatness of the plating surface affects the contact reliability. If there are pinholes, burrs or impurities in the plating, it may cause poor contact, signal attenuation or communication interruption. Therefore, the electroplating process needs to strictly control the current density, plating solution purity and post-processing process to ensure that the coating is uniform and dense.

In high-frequency applications such as 5G, the impact of the coating on signal integrity is more significant. High-frequency signals are susceptible to the skin effect, the current is concentrated on the surface of the conductor, and the conductivity and thickness of the coating directly affect the signal loss. Therefore, optimizing the coating process is crucial to improving the stability of high-speed data transmission of SIM cards.