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Sound technical content, curated with aloha by
Ted Mooney, P.E. RET
Pine Beach, NJ

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Thinfilm gold or platinum on polymer spheres

I am looking for information on plating a thin and uniform platinum or gold film onto small plastic spheres. The film thickness will be 500nm to 1.5um thick, the diameter of the polymer spheres will be on the order of 100um dia. I would be more than willing to purchase these products off the shelf if anyone has a contact or lead for me, but assuming I cannot find a commercial supplier I will need to preform this task in my labs here and would appreciate any and all advise regarding methods and or suggested texts/manuals/shops, etc.

Thanks in advance for your assistance!

Frank Schumacher
University of Washington - Seattle, Washington

It sounds like what you need to do is to seed the plastic with a palladium activator and then apply an electroless (auto catalytic) gold. You can buy these chemicals from Technic.

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey

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