FCI reveals silver based plating technology

14th May 2015

Nat Bowers

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FCI has completed accelerated life testing of its GCS silver based plating to offer an alternative to existing gold/nickel and GXT finishes in electronic connector applications. GCS plating combines long-term wear and reliability benefits traditionally found in gold-plated connectors, with the lower resistance and higher current carrying capacity found with silver plating.

GCSmakes use of a special hard silver plating layer providing improved durability and therefore higher mating cycles compared to traditional soft silver plating widely used today. The gold flash covering the hard silver layer ensures an effective long term protection against tarnishing and sulfidation which outperforms traditional silver plating protected only by conventional organic anti-tarnish solutions.

Antoine Fares-Karam, Global Plating Engineering Manager, FCI, comments: “GCS is proven to be a reliable plating solution that can be used with both signal and power connectors for various electronic connections providing a compelling value proposition."

Introduced in PwrBlade ULTRA connectors, this plating along with the unique contact design enables the PwrBlade ULTRA connectors to claim the lowest power loss of competing connectors in the 10mm class of hot-swap distributed power connectors.

“Our GCS plating technology is an important enabler to address the needs of data center equipment to reduce power loss through the connectors. While we offered some of the lowest resistance power connectors on the market, our research proved we could perform even better with silver-based plating,” adds Michael Blanchfield, Portfolio Director, Power Solutions, FCI.