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-----Uncommon electrodepositing combinations
2001
Hi all,
Let's say you were weird and you wanted to electrodeposit Uranium on Titanium or Iron on Zirconium or any other not commonly known combination. Have any of you ever seen a reference that contains a list of known plating combinations? For example, I know we can plate Chromium on Copper, yet I do not know if we can plate Chromium on say Thorium. Aside from a reference list, perhaps someone could direct me to a formula of some kind that would work? Or, ignoring all of the above, can it be simply stated that all metals can be electrodeposited on all other metals? Thanks for any help that can be provided. All the best, James
James W. Kincaid III- Reno, Nevada, USA
2001
That was a great question and I don't know why it took so long for someone to ask it!
As for plating onto other metals, even rocks and orchids can be plated. So, yes, we can electroplate onto anything. But we can't always plate well enough onto them. Say you are trying to plate onto an orchid: you are probably very little concerned about bond strength and thermal cycling and porosity issues. But if your are trying to plate onto titanium or an exotic refractory alloy, you are probably doing it for pressing engineering reasons, i.e, trying to build an exotic machine part that needs strength, corrosion resistance, high temperature capability, etc--and it may be impractical to electroplate coatings that are good enough onto a substrate that you can't really get and hold sufficiently active for a metallurgical bond.
As for the metal of the plating itself, many can be electroplated, but some cannot. To electroplate in the conventional sense, you need to ionize the metal in a water solution. Aluminum, for example, can't be electroplated because the water will ionize into hydrogen and oxygen before the aluminum will ionize. Then again, there are more exotic electroplating technologies whereby the solution is based on an organic acid or molten salts, which don't suffer the problem that water does, and allow aluminum to be electroplated.
Finally, there may be combinations that can be plated but are of limited utility. For example, you can plate gold onto copper but it is not a very good combination because the gold will eventually (depending on the temperature) diffuse into the copper, and you'll have a gold-copper alloy instead of a gold plating.
Ted Mooney, P.E.
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