SINGAPORE (May 14, 2015) — FCI, a leading supplier of connectors and interconnect systems, announced today the release of a new silver based plating technology, named GCS™.
FCI has completed accelerated life testing of its new silver based plating GCS™ 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.
GCSTM makes 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.
“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”, says Antoine Fares-Karam, Global Plating Engineering Manager at FCI.
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 for Power Solutions at FCI.
For more information about GCS™ silver plating technology, please contact us at communications@fci.com.
