I take it you have your own reasons for applying electroless nickel as the
barrier layer underlying the soft gold layer. Electroless nickel will work
just fine for your application.

Having said that, if your wire bonding sights are bussed to allow for Gold
plating, then they also are bussed for electrolytic nickel plating, which is
gnerally a much  less demanding process to run and maybe accomplished using
the same racking just prior to gold plating.

Electroless nickel has traditionally been used where no bussing is available.
An excellent surface for gold wire bonding is electroless nickel/electroless
palladium /flash gold at 100uins/12uins /1uins (nicroinch) respectively.

George Milad
HDI Consulting
Chairman IPC Plating Committee
(516) 901-3874 cell

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