Sandvik Materials Technology has introduced a new product form and launched a range of surface engineered stainless steel strip materials. Manufacturing processes have been developed to apply coatings to stainless steel strips, enabling selected combinations of substrates and surface layers to provide new material properties. A high degree of manufacturing flexibility enables surface engineered strips to be tailor made to customer specifications. Properties such as electrical conductivity, low resistivity, corrosion, surface function or decorative appearance can be met or enhanced, making the new Sandvik surface technology products suitable for the electronics industry, for example. Typical electronic applications include tactile domes, contact springs, shielding and improving the soldering properties of electronic components. Surface engineered strip material into the electronic market will be branded Sandvik Santronic ™. Specific customer requirements are met by selecting the optimum combination of substrate material and surface layer. The surface layers can consist of any metallic element, for example aluminium, nickel, copper or silver and mixtures of elements or binary compounds, such as aluminium oxide (Al2O3) or titanium oxide (TiO2). Coatings can be single or double-sided, with thicknesses ranging from tenths of nanometers up to a few microns. They can be different on each side of the strip and are supplied with a max thickness tolerance of +/-10% of the surface layer and guaranteed levels of surface roughness. All coatings have a low content of impurities and foreign elements – a key property for creating excellent electrical and contact properties.
