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Poor adhesion in plating onto titanium
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I need to electroplate silver onto grade 2 titanium and have pickled the titanium in 1% hf but am still getting poor adhesion.
Andrew Huntinventer - Wales, UK
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Getting good adhesion on titanium is difficult and usually involves more than a one-step pickling process. ASM Metals Handbook Vol. 5, Surface Engineering, has a good chapter on preparation. There is also a procedure to nickel plate the titanium and then bake it for diffusion, which may be applicable to your needs.
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 Ted Mooney, P.E. RET finishing.com Brick, New Jersey |
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Hi Andrew.
Try to blast the area before pretreatment steps. Rinse the part in a citric acid before HF pickling.
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Anders Sundman surface finishing engineer Sweden |
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The Nickel Plate and diffusion bake is the way to go but try wet blasting the part first with a 1000 mesh novaculite, pickle in hydrochloric acid and a rochelle salt dip before plating with ELECTROLESS nickel. This is a proven method.
Tim Hamlettdecorative plating - Miami, Florida, USA
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Long time ago, one of our workers inadvertedly overheated a section of the electric immersion titanium heater of our electroless nickel bath due to insufficient level. The heater had been picking up a lot of EN plate for several shifts (over 20 mils) due to lack of time to strip it. The EN plate practically welded to the Ti heater and proved impossible to scrape off on that section. No need to say there was no activation or special procedures to improve adhesion. Only a short time at about 500oC.
Guillermo MarrufoMonterrey, NL, Mexico
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Hi thanks all
The titanium parts are laser mirrors and nickel is a bit of a problem, I am going to try a gold strike next I knocked up a siver strike this did help a bit.
The mirrors are highly polished titanium and the optical face needs to be silver or gold, and in the UK technical plating is disappearing unfortunately
inventor - Wales
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Forget electroplating. Titanium is a difficult substrate. I suggest that you talk to your local university. Find the guy with the electron microscope and buy him/her a pint. They will have a simple vacuum evaporation or sputtering set up which could be just what you are looking for if you only need a thin coating. (Call it PVD and they will be impressed) Physical vapour deposition.
Good luck
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Geoff Smith Hampshire, England |
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Years ago, I experimented on Gold Plating onto Titanium Bangle Bracelets. I end up making my own gold strike out of gold Hydroxide and Hydrofluoric acid. After HF etch, DO NOT Water rinse, Go live into the HF-Gold Strike until completely covered, Now you can plate whatever you want.
We never went into full production with this procedure, because we went into PVD(Magnetron Sputtering).
Sputtering directly onto Titanium substrate with gold, titanium Nitride, titanium carbonitide or other metal, adhesion was not an issue.
Good Luck.
- Mays Landing, New Jersey
November 29, 2011 -- this entry appended to this thread by editor in lieu of spawning a duplicative thread
I would like to electroplate gold onto titanium for a biological application. Is there any way to do this without first plating with copper or another metal?
John Wironenproduct designer - Topsham, Maine, U.S.
November 30, 2011
Hi, John.
We appended your inquiry onto a previous thread which suggests that sputtering rather than electroplating is the better way to put gold directly onto titanium.
Regards,
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 Ted Mooney, P.E. RET finishing.com Brick, New Jersey |