Traditional metal electroplating involves submerging a cathode into an aqueous bath of metal salts, with either applied or chemical reducing potential. This puts a limitation on plating large objects and leads to high-volume liquid waste. In response to this, we are investigating a novel bathless plating technique where the semi-dry and viscous metal salts are used in place of a liquid aqueous electrolyte. Here, the cathode surface can be plated without submerging in a liquid bath, allowing for surface plating of large, irregular, or water sensitive objects. In this study, we investigate the dry-cell electro stamping of Ni, Cu, Zn, Sn, along with common alloys of bronze (12 mol% Sn) and brass (25 mol% Zn) in copper. Test electro-deposits were prepared for each metal salt on 9 cm<sup>2</sup> nickel foil cathodes using a carbon anode under applied currents of 0.005, 0.01 and 0.02 Acm<sup>-1</sup>. The resulting films were characterized with X-ray diffraction to identify crystallinity and phase, X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy to examine elemental compositions, potentiometry to monitor electrical parameters during plating, in addition to optical and atomic force microscopy to visualize microscale and nanoscale surface morphology.

Dry-cell electro-stamping of metals and alloys with a bathless method

ACS Spring 2022

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