Optimization of electroless copper plating on polyethylene films modified by surface grafting of vinyl ether of monoethanolamine

Metallized plastics have recently received significant interest for their useful applications in electronic devices such as for integrated circuits, packaging, printed circuits and sensor applications. In this work the metallized films were developed by electroless copper plating of polyethylene films grafted with vinyl ether of monoethanoleamine. There are several techniques for metal deposition on surface of polymers such as evaporation, sputtering, electroless plating and electrolysis. In this work the metallized films were developed by electroless copper plating of polyethylene films grafted with vinyl ether of monoethanoleamine. Polyethylene films were subjected to gamma-radiation induced surface graft copolymerization with vinyl ether of monoethanolamine. Electroless copper plating was carried out effectively on the modified films. The catalytic processes for the electroless copper plating in the presence and the absence of SnCl2 sensitization were studied and the optimum activation conditions that give the highest plating rate were determined. The effect of grafting degree on the plating rate is studied. Electroless plating conditions (bath additives, pH and temperature) were optimized. Plating rate was determined gravimetrically and spectrophotometrically at different grafting degrees. The results reveal that plating rate is a function of degree of grafting and increases with increasing grafted vinyl ether of monoethanolamine onto polyethylene. It was found that pH 13 of electroless bath and plating temperature 40°C are the optimal conditions for the plating process. The increasing of grafting degree results in faster plating rate at the same pH and temperature. The surface morphology of the metallized films was investigated using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The adhesion strength between the metallized layer and grafted polymer was studied using tensile machine. SEM photos and adhesion measurements clarified that uniform and adhered deposits were obtained under optimum conditions.

Asynchronous distributed parallelization of mobile network optimization algorithms

It has been years since the introduction of the Dynamic Network Optimization (DNO) concept, yet the DNO development is still at its infant stage, largely due to a lack of breakthrough in minimizing the lengthy optimization runtime. Our previous work, a distributed parallel solution, has achieved a significant speed gain. To cater for the increased optimization complexity pressed by the uptake of smartphones and tablets, however, this paper examines the potential areas for further improvement and presents a novel asynchronous distributed parallel design that minimizes the inter-process communications. The new approach is implemented and applied to real-life projects whose results demonstrate an augmented acceleration of 7.5 times on a 16-core distributed system compared to 6.1 of our previous solution. Moreover, there is no degradation in the optimization outcome. This is a solid sprint towards the realization of DNO.