Metal nickel sheets (nickel foils) are widely used as raw materials for the manufacture of electronic products. In the manufacture of electronic products such as mobile phones, batteries, electronic circuit boards and light bulbs, a large number of nickel foils are needed. The thickness, purity and ductility of physical parameters of nickel foil are the key factors to impact the quality of the electronic products. With the development trend of electronic product miniaturization and high performance, the thickness, purity and ductility and other physical parameters of the nickel foil are put forward higher requirement for thinner thickness, ductility, higher purity and better conductivity, lower the resistance value.
As the raw material, the electrolytic nickel plate can not be rolled because of its high hydrogen content, high sulfur content, great brittleness and low toughness. At present, the metal nickel foil is produced by the traditional process. The traditional method of producing metal nickel foil is: first, the electrolytic nickel plate is cut, vacuum melting and cast into nickel ingot, after planing surface, heating, hot rolling, the semi-finished products are pickled. Then, after a number of cold rolling, calendering, annealing and pickling, to reach the required thickness after the strip, and then the finished annealing, and finally complete the packaging.
The traditional nickel foil production process has the following problems:
1. In the process of smelting ingot, according to the process requirements, it need to add iron, manganese, titanium, silicon, carbon, rare earth materials, which increased impurity content in the product, the impurities content except for nickel, cobalt content in the product can reach up to about 0.5%, thus it greatly reduced the purity of the materials, the resistance of nickel foil has increased, it is difficult to satisfy the need of high purity, low internal resistance of the nickel foil.
2. More production links, large equipment investment, production needs to cover an area of large.
3. The production cycle is long, it requires 7 days, generally from feeding to finished products, the production efficiency is low.
4. High energy consumption, in the smelting, hot rolling process, high energy consumption, production cost of power consumption is about 7000 yuan / ton.
5. In the process of melting, due to high temperature (above 1500'C), it caused more than 2% loss. Although there are many defects and shortcomings in the traditional methods of nickel foil fabrication, the traditional methods have been used for the production of nickel strip for decades, and no new alternative methods have been developed.
