Pretreatments for Electroless Silver Plating of D-Band Plastic Rectangular Waveguides

Electroless silver plating is an easy-to-use method to coat plastics and therefore finds its application in the additive manufacturing of waveguide or other RF components. Depending on the plastic used, a pretreatment of the waveguide component is necessary to ensure a sufficient adhesion of the silver layer on the plastic. Different pretreatments are evaluated for two plastics and analyzed regarding the plateability of the waveguide and its RF performance.