In this study, a ductile electroless Ni-P coating on the flexible printed circuit board (FPCB) was prepared in an acidic nickel plating bath. The addition of dipropylamine (DPA) in electroless plating not only improves the ductility of the Ni-P coating, but also enhances the corrosion resistance. The further analysis reveals that the ductility improvement and enhancement of corrosion resistance for the Ni-P coating may be due to the fact that the addition of DPA significantly refines the volume of columnar nodule and reduce the porosity, thus leading to the released internal stress. In addition, it was found that the nodule within the Ni-P coating grew into a columnar structure, which may be also contribute to the improvement of ductility. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.