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

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Dissolution reactions in wet etching of Nickel & silver

Q. Hello,

I am working on the wet etching of Nickel and Silver and trying to understand the chemical reactions that happen during the dissolution of these two metals in the following solutions:

Nickel in HNO₃ : H₂O (1:4) at 40° C, and
Silver in H₂O₂ : NH₄OH : H₂O (1:1:4) at room temperature.

I am not a chemist myself and am not able to find any help in reference books on wet etching!

Thanks for your help!

Jerome Assal
- Lenzburg, Switzerland
2002

"Explosives and Their Power"

on AbeBooks

or Amazon

(affil links)

A. Hi, Jerome. I'm not a chemist either, and can't answer exactly. But I can tell you that nickel and silver will not dissolve in simple mineral acids. Rather an oxidizing agent like Nitric acid (in your nickel reaction) or peroxide (in your silver reaction) is required to oxidize the metal (raise its oxidation state) so it can dissolve in the acid.

In view of your advisement that you are not a chemist, I would urge you to very carefully study the topic of "metal fulminates" and "silver fulminates" because my understanding is that these motion sensitive explosives can be easily and accidentally created in reactions involving silver and ammonia ⇦ this on eBay or Amazon [affil links] .

Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
August 9, 2008

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