How to Do Platinum Plating/Coating onto Titanium

A. Technic, Inc. or Sel-Rex, Inc. have proper chemistries, but surface prep is the key. Grit blasting or fluorides are usually required.
Good Luck,
Dave
SUNNYvale, CA

A. Dear Bob

Plating titanium with platinum is usually done in melt of salts (KCN and K2Pt(CN)4), using the titanium as cathode and platinum as an anode. There are very few firms that use this process for making anodes e.g. for chrome baths. You can ask also suppliers for platinum plated titanium anodes for chrome baths where they plate them and maybe you find someone there who can plate your parts,too.

Good luck
Marcus

A. Plating on to metals like titanium, zirconium, uranium, etc, that are very oxygen active is often done with ion plating, a PVD process. In some cases a "strike" is put on by ion plating and the coating built up by electroplating.

A. Bob,

Electroless platinum plating technology might be applicable to your particular situation. A nickel strike may be required in order to get good adhesion onto the substrate. Good luck with your search.

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Ed. note: Letter 35217 also addressed electroless platinum plating.

A. Dear Mr.Bob B.,

We electrodeposit platinum on titanium with plating thickness up to 10 micron with good adhesion properties.

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Ed. note-- Cousin H.H.: If you're at liberty to help out on these plating process questions, please do. But this forum is made possible by our generous supporting advertisers (you are welcome to join them if you wish), and we can't let their money be spent steering business away from them and towards their competitors. Thanks for your understanding folks.

A. Dear Sealen and others,

I'd suggest you to look into Patent UK 1253858 CH 527911 and related.

Hope this can be of help to you.

Kind regards,

A. Hi cousin Kelvin. Getting good adhesion onto titanium is very difficult, so before we go too far in a difficult direction that may not even be necessary, may I ask if you are aware that platinum clad titanium material is commercially available?

Q. I had experimented on using various acids to etch the Titanium strips but was unable to get adhesion of Platinum on Titanium during plating. I had baked the strip for about 30 minutes but without avail. Do you know of any process or someone who can offer advice?

A. The difficulty of getting good adhesion onto titanium from conventional aqueous electroplating is a well known issue. Volume 5 of the ASM Metals Handbook, "Surface Engineering" (the ninth edition will suffice too) covers the problem is fairly good depth. Some people use the cleaning/pretreatment methods in that book, then nickel plate, then do a high temperature bake to diffuse nickel into the titanium. Then they activate and plate the nickel.

There are many suppliers of platinized titanium anodes around the world who can build exactly the components you seek if you don't have a special reason to do it yourself. Good luck.

Yes, it really is the case. Simple pretreatment cycles of NaOH followed by HCl are often fine for steel parts, but they are inadequate for titanium. See ASM's Metals Handbook, "Surface Engineering" for pretreatment cycles for titanium. Good luck.

adv.
Our company has technology of plating Pt on Ti, if intermediate thin layer of Ni (0.1-0.5 micron) is acceptable for your application.

A. Hi, Aaron. My understanding is that the best anodes are clad not plated. But Dave Kinghorn has given us some clues in thread 1503.

I won't say you can't do it, but I think plating platinum on titanium is quite complex for a hobbyist (I saw a facility where it was done and it was quite involved and used very aggressive chemicals), but if you successfully plate platinum on titanium, let us know how thick you went, how long they last, and what you think they cost you. Thanks.

See ASM Metals Handbook, Vol. 5 for possible pretreatment cycles for plating titanium. Good luck.

Regards,

A. Hi Danny.

In terms of the answers that have already been offered, do you think plating out of molten salts as suggested by Marcus will be practical for your shop? Are you willing to invest in a PVD system as suggested by Donald? Do you feel that electroless plating as suggested by Jeff may be satisfactory?

If none of these seem appropriate for your situation, and it must be aqueous electroplating, please consult ASM Metals Handbook Vol. 5 for pretreatment processes for titanium, like nickel plating with a post-plate baking for diffusion, then activate the diffused nickel, and electroplate with a commercial platinum plating bath. Best of luck!

Regards,

A. Hi Nick

The simple answer is that you don't. It is a highly specialised process and you do not even give the size of the tube - microns or meters!

You are probably not aware that you can simply buy the material ready made. A few seconds search on "platinised titanium" turns up a number of suppliers that may have exactly what you want.

Q. Thanks for your reply Geoff.

I should have been more clear, actually I have a small cylindrical titanium block with a 2 mm bore drilled through the centre. It is this 2mm bore only that I would like to platinize and not the entire piece. Does this required specialised equipment and if so what kind of equipment are we talking about?

Nick

A. Hi Nick. We appended your inquiry to a thread on the same topic, discussing several different possible approaches, none of which are easy, but the "electroless platinum plating" is probably the least difficult.

But is there any chance you could just bore that hole a little bigger and press fit a platinum tube into it? It would likely be world's easier :-)

Regards,

A. Nick, This can be achieved by special surface preparation of the ID surface. After that you can plate anything on titanium. In order to isolate other surfaces, the tiny cathode wire is inserted into the tube.

adv.
We have done similar works. Contact us for help.

A. Hi Eshan. Parthasaradhy's "Practical Electroplating" suggests periodic reverse current, cathodic 5 sec, anodic 2 sec, at 50 ASF from ammoniacal platinum bath.

Lowenheim's "Modern Electroplating" [adv: this book on AbeBooks, eBay, Amazon] has about 3 pages on electrodeposition of platinum, and [affil link to this on eBay, AbeBooks, Amazon ] has excellent info on preparing titanium for plating onto. Good luck.

Regards,