Eco-friendly nickel (Ni) electroplating was carried out on a plastic substrate using chemically modified graphene sheets as an active and conductive layer to initiate electroplating without using conventional pretreatment or electroless metal-seeding processes. A graphene oxide (GO) solution was self-assembled on a polyethylene terephthalate (PET) film followed by evaporation to give GO layers (thickness around 6.5 mu m) on PET (GO/PET) film. Then, the GO/PET film was chemically and thermally reduced to convert the GO layers to reduced graphene oxide (RGO) layers on the PET substrate. The RGO-coated PET (RGO/PET) film showed the sheet resistance of 100 Omega per square. On RGO/PET film, Ni electroplating was conducted under the constant-current condition and the entire surface of the PET film was completely metalized with Ni without any voids. (C) 2011 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.