ELECTROPLATING

Ok today, I going to talk about my first attending lecture. The lecture was a chemical engineering lecture and the topic was electroplating. From what was presented during the lecture the concept (electroplating) looked worth searching about. And her is what I found. Electroplating is a term used in many engineering disciplines that describe the process of using electric power to transfer atoms of a conductive element to another, such as coating a copper ring with silver atoms. The process of electroplating starts with identifying the anode (connects to positive terminal) and cathode (connects to negative terminal) of the electroplating cell; those terminals should be connected to an external supply of electic current, which could be an electrical generator device. The object being plated should be connectd to the negative terminal. When the external power supply is on, the metal at the anode is oxidized (oxidation reation= Ag → Ag+ + e- ) in order to form cations with a + charge. These cations will be mixed with the anions in the solution. When oxidaion takes place the + cations (Ag) will move to the cathode, and when reduction takes place (opposite of oxidation) all the anions will move to the anode. This results with an effective transfer of Ag from the anode source to a plate covering the cathode. In order to have a successful electroplating, we should consider several factors including reliabel conductive metals with different reactivity range, approiate amount of electrical current, conductive solution, and low reactive electordes. Chosing the suitable factors carefully, will hopefully result with a successful electroplated object. Electroplating is used to coat many different materials with sliver or gold.