Oct. 28, 2024
Machinery
Most of the electronics we use in our daily lives contain at least a little bit of gold. While this precious metal is widely known for its beautiful, shiny appearance, it also has quite a few functional purposes that make it a sought-after material in a variety of industries.
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The electronics sector, though, is the main consumer of gold today. Even though that gold is rarely seen, it plays a critical role in keeping the components of your devices functioning properly over time. Electronic parts aren&#;t typically made entirely of gold because of the material&#;s cost. More often, manufacturers use electroplating to apply a thin layer of gold over the main material that comprises the component.
Frequently used in combination with nickel plating, the thin layer of gold protects the component from corrosion, heat, wear and helps ensure a reliable electrical connection. At Sharretts Plating Company, 99% of our gold plating work serves the electronics industry. Over the last eight decades, we&#;ve perfected our gold plating, also called Au plating, processes and offer both electroplating and immersion plating.
In the rest of this article, we&#;ll look in more detail at the processes, benefits and uses of gold plating for electronics and electrical components.
At SPC, we&#;ve developed and applied many gold plating processes. We use electro-deposition, which is commonly known as electroplating and uses an electric current to apply the coating. We also use immersion plating, which doesn&#;t use electricity.
To plate an item with electro-deposition, we connect the gold to the anode, the positively charged electrode, of an electrical circuit. We also connect the substrate, the material that we&#;ll be plating, to the cathode, which is the negatively charged electrode. We then immerse both pieces in an electrolytic solution.
Then, we apply a DC current to the anode. This oxidizes the metal atoms in the gold and dissolves them into the solution. The dissolved ions are reduced at the cathode, and they then deposit onto the substrate.
There are three basic types of gold plating baths:
We most frequently use reel-to-reel electroplating, also known as continuous electroplating, when applying gold to a material. We use this method to plate reels of raw material before they get shaped into electronic components. It can coat strips of manufactured parts.
We load the reels onto our equipment and feed it through our electroplating processes before re-reeling it. Reel-to-reel plating can cover an entire substrate or be used more precisely to plate specific parts.
At SPC, we also build our own racking equipment, which allows us to meet the precise requirements of our clients&#; projects. Rack plating is ideal for fragile components or larger, more complex projects. However, it can be difficult to create a uniform deposit, and discoloration may appear where the item attaches to the rack.
The process involves hanging the substrate on a rack that uses hooks to apply the electrical current and hold the items in place. Once everything is properly attached, we lower the rack into the electrolytic bath, depositing the plating material.
Barrel electroplating is useful for quickly and economically applying a uniform coating to a substrate. This method is less precise than other methods, and works best when the entire surface of an item needs to be plated. It&#;s also not ideal for large or fragile components, as the piece may be too large for the barrel or become damaged during the plating process.
In this method, we place the component to be plated in a barrel that contains the plating bath, as well as bars that provide the electrical contact. Machinery rotates the substrate in the barrel while electrical current is applied, resulting in a complete and uniform deposit.
For some applications, we use immersion plating, which doesn&#;t involve an electrical current. We dip the substrate into an electrolyte solution with gold ions, which causes the dissolution of ions from the substrate material. This releases electrons, allowing the gold ions to deposit onto the substrate. The gold ions replace the ions of the less noble metal, which typically results in a thin coating that has similar properties to electroplated gold.
While gold&#;s aesthetic appeal does contribute to its value, in the electronics industry, its functionality is what makes it such a prized material. Gold has several physical properties that lend themselves perfectly to use in electronic components. Manufacturers typically apply gold plating to connection points within electronic devices because it improves conductivity and protects the component, which helps that reliable connection last longer.
These properties include:
You can find gold in all sorts of electronics including smartphones, laptops and desktop computers. One ton of smartphones, or about 10,000 phones, contains approximately 10 troy ounces of gold, which is equal to around three fifths of a pound. From 200 laptops, you could get about five troy ounces of gold, which is worth roughly $.
Gold&#;s ability to improve and sustain electrical connectivity makes it ideal for all types of applications in electronics. Manufacturers can apply it to any place that must facilitate an electrical connection to improve its reliability. You can find Au plating on the outside of devices, such as on electrical connectors. Most of the gold in electronics, however, is located inside the devices in the circuit boards.
Electronics companies use gold plating to enhance the conductivity of the circuit board and protect it from corrosion. Keeping a reliable connection within the circuit board is crucial to the reliable operation of any device.
Semiconductor components, such as top chucks, reflector rings and reflector arrays, are another area where gold plating is especially useful. Semiconductors, such as transistors, chips and other control parts, are partially conductive and may use plating to make a device more electrically efficiently. It also helps to protect these vital components from outside elements.
Because semiconductor chips are so small and fragile, the electroplating used for them varies slightly from the standard procedures. The chip must be handled carefully to avoid breaking any of the tiny wires inside, which would cause a faulty component. Even dust particles getting into the chip can result in a malfunction.
Because of this, the room where semiconductor plating takes place must have 0.01% of the amount of dust normally in outside air. The electrolytic bath must also be thoroughly filtered to remove any dust or other small particles.
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In fact, in all electronics plating procedures, it&#;s necessary to prepare the substrate surface adequately to prevent the deposition of ionic and nonionic residue. These residues can reduce conductivity and even prevent the metal coating from adhering properly. Although the process of removing these residues required using hazardous organic solvents in the past, today we use eco-friendly, high-pressure water systems to prepare the surfaces of electronics for electroplating.
As useful as gold is, it&#;s even more useful when combined with other metals. A layer of nickel is often placed on a substrate directly under the gold plating layer. This underlayer provides several benefits:
Another common way to increase durability is to add a small amount of cobalt or nickel directly to the gold. This substance is referred to as hard gold &#; it&#;s relatively common and highly durable. Pure gold is often called soft gold.
Gold plating doesn&#;t need to be thick to be effective. In most cases, the gold should be as thin as possible without comprising any of its useful properties. For most connector manufacturing uses, a 0.8 micron layer of gold over a 1.3 micron layer of nickel should provide enough durability. Based on the application, however, you may need to vary the thickness of the plating.
The needs of your project will also determine whether you should choose hard gold or soft gold. For applications where durability is the most important aspect, hard gold is the best option. If you want a malleable coating, or if durability isn&#;t a priority, soft gold may be the right choice.
When it comes to metal plating for electronics, gold is an ideal choice. It offers the resistance to corrosion, wear and heat, as well as the enhanced conductivity vital to properly functioning electronic equipment.
When you work with the plating experts at SPC, we&#;ll assess your project&#;s needs and help you choose the right materials and plating methods for the job. With eight decades of plating experience, we have the skills and knowledge to reliably achieve an effective result, even for unusual projects. To get started, contact us or request a free quote through our website today.
We will never recommend unnecessary products or processes, so if our recommendations differ from something else that you've read or watched, there will always be a good reason. It might be that we've recommended an additional step to improve plating longevity, it may be that we've cautioned against the use of a certain product because it could introduce complications to the process, it could simply be that we advocate a slightly different procedure as in our experience, it is easier or offers better results.
We will always be happy to explain the reasons to you in detail - please just reach out and ask. There is no such thing as a silly question.
Most often, conflicting advice relates to surface preparation of metals. Different surfaces require different types of preparation in order to plate successfully. Many surfaces cannot be plated onto directly. Prep is usually very straightforward and does not add much time to the overall process of plating but is vital for good results.
When we sell you an electroplating kit, it will come with the correct prep solutions for the surfaces it is designed to plate over. You'll also get step by step instructions, and training is included with larger kits or more involved processes.
Complications arise mainly when customers purchase individual chemicals from us without a clear understanding of the process they need to follow.
We often hear from people that have followed a process from a YouTube video which hasn't worked for them. YouTube is often amazing and has a lot of informative videos, but as with any topic, there is also a lot of misinformation. There are a lot of videos on plating where sufficient surface prep has been skipped or overlooked and unforunately, this doesn't educate the viewer on correct plating processes.
To give an example, plating over silver jewellery requires (amongst other prep) laying down a palladium barrier layer before applying the top coat. This is because gold or other metals used as a top coat will sink down (migrate) into silver shortly after plating, bringing discolouration in the plated finish. However, is perfectly possible because migration isn't immediate, to make a video where this prep has not been done and produce a lovely, shiny, gold plated item at the end which looks fantastic. However, in the coming days the plating is going to deteriorate, and if the item has been sold, will result in a complaint for a jeweller.
To give another example, it is possible to make a video in very little time showing plating a copper item in gold. Gold can be applied straight onto the copper and it will look great. However, this would be very poor advice because copper needs to go through several prep stages in order for the plating to last. Copper is hugely prone to oxidisation and this needs to be dealt with in order for a lasting result. Shortcuts and 'hacks' are rarely useful when a process relies on specific chemistry to work successfully.
On another note, regarding safety, as we are not looking to appeal to an audience attempting to plate with homemade chemicals or products not intended for electroplating, our recommendations will almost certainly differ to the advice given in videos/articles geared towards this. These practices are inconsistent and potentially dangerous with poor quality outcomes.
We want you to be successful and have a wealth of information on various plating processes on our website. We are always happy to help and answer your questions both before and after purchase. We also have a YouTube channel of our own where we are building a growing collection of videos for different processes. Please reach out if you are unsure, we will offer transparent advice that ensures you'll be plating with confidence in no time at all.
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