doped with various dopants on a copper base metal have been studied after an accelerated aging test at 35 u00b0 c and 95 percent relative humidity for seven days it was found that nickel which deposits with a lt 111 gt preferred orientation has lower contact resistance than those deposits having other preferred orientations e g the lt 200 gt orientation it is speculated that the addition of certain foreign elements in the nickel bath lowers the overvoltage of the deposition of nickel causing the change from the usual nickel deposit to the lt 111 gt preferred orientation generally electroplated nickel deposits from solutions containing nickel sulfate and nickel chloride have preferred orientations in the lt 100 gt and lt 110 gt crystallographic planes respectively rather than the lt 111 gt orientation it has been found that the contact resistance of pure nickel having a preferred orientation of lt 100 gt is 4 to 5 times higher than that of nickel having a preferred orientation of lt 110 gt after aging similarly the contact resistance of the lt 110 gt preferred orientated nickel after aging is significantly higher than that of the nickel having a lt 111 gt preferred orientation fig1 3 illustrate the ratio of the lt 111 gt to u00b0 200 gt x ray peak intensities as a function of the contact resistance after aging for sb p and in doped nickel for each of the materials.