The relationship between self‐annealing of plated copper and copper surface treatment

This paper discusses how the grain size of plated copper changes as time passes by observing the copper surface topography after surface treatment with a roughening agent. This paper also discusses how the time until the recrystallization terminates depends on the amount and type of plating additives as well as current density. The results agree with the known mechanism of grain growth. As a result of our experiments, the best process to gain the optimal surface topography is proposed. We firmly believe that this paper will contribute to the improvement in quality control of the copper surface treatment process, which will in turn lead to the fabrication of PCBs and plastic packages with higher reliability.