Letter 38060

Electro-plating bismuth-aluminium-copper alloy  

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I have a question.

I need to electro-plate bismuth, aluminium, copper on aluminium foil/sheet. This is a experiment on technology you might not understand.
aLSO, IN WHICH ACID CAN i DISSOLVE FINE POWDERS OF THE METALS DESCRIBED ABOVE TO PRODUCE PLATING SOLUTION? I was told that i can dissolve some metals in acid and then plate from that solution. But I got a question on it that if dissolve the Bismuth for example and then put in aluminium foil to plate bismuth on-will aluminium get dissolved in that acid or the thin bismuth layer get dissolved as soon as it get plated on?

Siarhei Borisov
Scientific Research - Newcastle Upon Tyne, United Kingdom

Siarhei, you need to go to a plating shop and have them assist you with this project. I would not say that it is impossible to do what you want to do, but the barriers are extremely imposing for a skilled electroplater with decades of experience. To try to accomplish this when you have no electroplating experience is not going to get you anywhere. Some of the barriers: in general you can't plate onto aluminum without a zincate pretreatment; in general you can't plate aluminum or any aluminum alloy out of an aqueous solution; in general, you can't make up plating solutions by dissolving metal in acid; in general you don't make plating solutions, you buy them so that you can take advantage of the decades of development effort that preceded your experiment; in general it is difficult to plate binary alloys and exceptionally difficult to plate ternary alloys because of the Nernst equation. Visit a prototyping plating shop for your project.

Ted Mooney, P.E.  finishing.com Brick, New Jersey

Siarhei, plating a bismuth-aluminium-copper alloy onto an aluminium substrate is not an easy task. As Ted says, it is impossible to electrodeposit aluminium or aluminium alloys from an aqueous bath - it just doesn't work. However, there is an increased interest in electroplating from "ionic liquids", where the problems associated with aqueous technologies are not found. A couple of British Universities are looking at the technology, so do an internet search and find out more details about it. One of the possible advantages of this technology may be that depositing onto aluminium will not require the usual zincate treatment that Ted quite rightly refers to as being essential for aqueous depostion onto aluminium. Alloy deposition of this type of formulation will be very problematic because of the wide ranging postions of the metals in the electrochemical series, but with adequate complexing, it may be possible.

Trevor Crichton R&D practical scientist - UK

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