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Selective Plating using Platinum

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Q. I was using Rhodium pen plating solution for plating on gold jewelry, but price of rhodium is very high, so I decided to make platinum pen plating solution. Can I use platinum metal dissolved in Aqua Regia or any other idea. Please suggest any idea.
Thanks

Babu R Cherayath
- Kochi, Kerala , India
November 15, 2022

A. Expired USA patent US2984604A can be good source of info on that subject.Hope it helps and good luck!

Goran Budija
- cerovski vrh Croatia

⇩ Related postings, oldest first ⇩

Q. We are looking into the possibility of selectively plating a small section of a stainless steel rod (both 316L or duplex Stainless steels are being considered) using platinum. Are there any experiences (both positive and negative) that we should be aware of?

Mike Turner
Chemical Manufacturing - Dobbs Ferry, New York
2006

A. If yours is an immersion plating approach you should activate the SS in a Woods nickel strike first, then plate with conventional platinum chemistry. For selective plating w/o immersion there is a process called brush plating where the shaft can be rotated during deposition. There are several vendors that offer nickel activators for SS and also solutions to deposit platinum.

Guillermo Marrufo
Monterrey, NL, Mexico

"THE" brush plating book:
Electrochemical Metallizing by Marv Rubinstein

on AbeBooks

or eBay or

Amazon

(affil links)

A. For good adhesion you must avoid an immersion layer, so put your steel into the bath "live". I would also recommend you use a strike - either Woods nickel or some other metal. I would suggest you may want to consider a cyanide strike process and this will give better adhesion. I believe you can still get platinum cyanide baths, but if not, use nickel, copper or silver, then plate with non-cyanide platinum. you may also want to heat treat the stainless steel after giving it a strike to ensure there is no hydrogen entrapment that will affect your adhesion

Trevor Crichton
R&D practical scientist
Chesham, Bucks, UK

A. Brush electroplating is a process will selectively plate areas of larger pieces and platinum is one of the many metals that can be deposited by this method.

Your application seems pretty straight forward but we would need to know more information such as to the thickness, and the number of parts you are interested in plating in order to provide you with any more details.

Chris Helwig
- Valencia, California

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