電気めっき加工におけるめっき膜厚分布均一化のための遮蔽物のトポロジー最適化

抄録

The uniformity of deposition thickness in electroplating processes is vital to the realization of desirable surface qualities of many products. The thickness distribution of deposits varies according to numerous factors, such as the arrangement and shapes of auxiliary cathodes, anodes and shields, and the detailed configuration of the plating process. In recent years, computer analyses such as the Finite Element Method (FEM) have become widespread. Such analytical tools can predict thickness distributions, search for optimal process configurations, and avoid production problems, to some extent, but the selection of the most effective analytical conditions still depends on skilled analysts. This study presents a topology optimization method to achieve uniform deposition thickness, applied to the design of the shields placed in an electroplating bath. The proposed method uses level set boundary expressions and the FEM to analyze the electrochemical field. The Kreisselmeier-Steinhauser (KS) function for the current density distribution on a cathode is employed as an objective function, since current density is nearly proportional to the thickness of the resulting electroplating. The magnitude of the current density on the cathode is set as a constraint so that it does not fall below a certain value, to avoid lengthy plating times that would occur if the current density were too low. Numerical examples are presented to confirm the utility of the proposed method and the results demonstrate that the proposed method can obtain appropriate shapes and arrangements of shields.