109. Plating onto molybdenum

Letter 109

Plating onto molybdenum

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I am looking for some advice on plating molybdenum. After checking out the mainstream literature and trying lots of experiments, still can't get it to work.

I am trying to plate on a wire EDM moly surface ~3 microns of nickel followed by ~3 microns of gold. The main constraint we face is that the molybdenum is part of an assembly which cannot withstand temperatures over ~700C...so the "plate thin nickel + hydrogen sinter" approach isn't feasible.

The assembly must be able to hold up to a post-plate 500C heat treatment without blistering--a real challenge. If anybody has some ideas on what might work, I'm all ears. Thanks for helping.

Ted Adlam -
- Singapore

ASM International's "Metals Handbook: Volume 5: Surface Engineering has an excellent chapter on plating onto molybdenum. It may be a good start.

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Finishing.com Inc. - Brick, NJ

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