In this paper, a pre-treatment process for electroless copper plating on the ceramics was explored. Due to the catalytic activity of gold nanoparticles, the traditional three-step coarsening-sensitization-activation pretreatment process has been optimized to a two-step coarsening-activation process. In our study, the following results were observed: electroless copper coating on the ceramics was formed after activating the substrate by gold nanoparticles; a more flat and compact nano-composite coating was also obtained by adding gold nanoparticles to the plating solutions. The mechanisms of pre-treatment and composite plating with gold nanoparticles were discussed. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.