A novel and green electroless copper

Glyoxylic acid (GA) has been reported to be a promising autocatalytic reducing agent in electroless copper for more than 26 years, which can eliminate the environmental hazards, health and safety concerns associated with formaldehyde. This paper will introduce a novel and environmental-friendly electroless copper process with GA and tartrate as autocatalytic reducing agent and chelatant respectively. It had comparable plating performance with those conventional formaldehyde baths and the decomposition of GA can be suppressed. This novel GA electroless copper bath can potentially be applied in both vertical and horizontal equipment.