Utilizing electroplated gold has many capabilities in plating for a variety of industries and uses with its beneficial properties. These can range from telecommunications, semiconductors & electronics, oil & gas, to energy & technology. This metal has many desirable properties, such as great electrical conductivity and corrosion resistance. The metal itself has a bright, slightly reddish yellow color when in its purest state. The uses can extend to various industries and applications with what gold can provide.
Gold has a significant use in medical applications for its ability to be radiopaque. It can be plated onto stents, catheters, guidewires, and similar items as marker bands for tracking through the body, like during a fluoroscopy. With the use of these in the body, gold has to be biocompatible, and it does hold this property. Gold has been used on medical balloons for electrode usage for ablation or stimulation for example. Using gold in the body can lead to being in corrosive environments, and gold has great corrosive resistance to hold up long term in the body. The medical applications can be far reaching with gold as the choice.
Joining dissimilar metals can be done efficiently through the use of electroplated gold. For example, Nickel Titanium and Stainless Steel do not weld together efficiently to keep joint strength because of their different chemical and physical properties. Gold can be plated on the section to be welded for each and join those sections together at a common point. This allows both metal properties to be kept, like Nitinol’s shape memory advantage for example. This could be used for other metal pairings that need to be combined potentially.
A great application for gold plating can be for plating neodymium magnets. These magnets are one of the most powerful commercially available magnets, up to ten times stronger than the strongest ceramic magnet. These can be used in disk drives in computers, motors in cordless equipment, and many medical applications. Implants in the body for gastroesophageal, cardiovascular, and gastrointestinal can use these magnets, and gold can be used for its biocompatibility again. ProPlate has designed a plating process to allow for the magnet to plate properly and be completely hermetically sealed, while still keeping the magnetic properties. These new medical possibilities with neodymium magnets are spreading quickly in various sectors of this industry.
There are countless possibilities with plating gold for all the properties it holds and the ways it can be utilized. Many industries take advantage of its great corrosion resistance, electrical conductivity, and biocompatibility as benefits. Gold’s usage is increasing in the medical field and ProPlate is seeking new opportunities to assist in engineering challenges. Please think of us if we could contribute to your next product.
