What Is the Difference Between Immersion Gold and Gold Plating?

Immersion gold is produced by chemical deposition

Immersion gold is a layer of coating formed by chemical redox reaction. Generally, the thickness is thicker.

Gold plating is produced by electroplating ionization

Gold platinggenerally refers to "electroplating gold", "electroplating nickel gold", "electrolytic gold", etc. There is a distinction between soft gold and hard gold (generally hard gold is used for gold fingers). The principle is to combine nickel and gold ( commonly known as gold salt) is dissolved in the chemical potion, the PCB is immersed in the electroplating tank and the current is turned on to form a nickel-gold coating on the copper foil surface of the PCB. Electronickel-gold is widely used in electronic products due to the advantages of high hardness, wear resistance and non-oxidation.

The difference between immersion gold and gold plating

1. The crystal structure formed by immersion gold and gold plating is different. The thickness of immersion gold is much thicker than gold plating. Immersion gold will be golden yellow, which is more yellow than gold plating (this is one of the methods to distinguish gold plating and immersion gold).

2. Immersion gold is easier to weld than gold plating and will not cause poor welding.

3. There is only nickel and gold on the pads of the immersion gold board. The signal is transmitted on the copper layer and will be not affected.

4. The crystal structure of immersion gold is denser than gold plating and it is not easy to be oxidized.

5. Gold plating is easy to short-circuit. However, there is only nickel-gold on the pad of the immersion gold PCB, so there will be no short circuit of the gold wire.

6. There is only nickel-gold on the pads of the immersion gold board, so the combination of wire resistance and copper layer is stronger.

7. The flatness and service life of the immersion gold PCB are better than the gold plating PCB.

Gold is widely used because of its excellent conductivity in electronic products, such as key boards, gold finger boards, etc. The most fundamental difference between gold plating PCB and immersion gold PCB is that gold plating is hard gold and immersion gold is soft gold.

About Victory PCB

Victory is a professional PCB manufacturer established in 2005.  If you want to know more about the difference between immersion gold and gold plating, please do not hesitate to contact us.