ENIG quiery for 10GHz Application
I have designed a filter with a hairpin pass band from 7.3 to 7.7 GHz,
do i have to coat a ENIG layer for this application,
Will there be any affetcs due to the conductivity issue of nickel or gold at the frequency mentioned above?
can i use just a copper trace and skip the ENIG coating...?
Kindly help me out ....!
As a hairpin filter is a "low-Q" type, it can be gold or nickel plated without a significant effect. By a fine measurement you may detect some minor change but certainly within a fraction of a per cent.
Perhaps the plate material would not help too much, but was proved that the Q factor of the middle resonator sections (and spacing between them), has a greater role in determining the overall Q rather than outer resonator sections (and their spacing).
For middle resonators, to increase their Q is preferable to use thinner lines (high impedance) and greater spacing.
I'm sure the ENIG plating will reduce the Qfactor. You could revert to silver plating which influences the Qfactor much less. And gold is even better.
Thanx for the replies......i am gonna go for silver plating and try with out any plating also ,
will come back shortly with my finding
Then also take into account that the environmental protection is less than Ni. Ask the advise of your production expert.
Hi all,
i have discussed with production expert in our organisation and decided to go for a 2 micron Electroless Gold plating.
2 micron gold plate will work and be thin enough to not perturb the fields much. Unfortunately, it is not thick enough to keep the copper from oxidizing over a longer period of time.