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What exactly is Nanoplating?

IN OUR DAYS WE SEE THIS TERM WITH LOTS OF MANUFACTURES, BUT COULD YOU GIVE US A CLEAR IDEA OF WHAT IS NANOPLATING? WHICH TECHNOLOGY IS NEEDED AND THE PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS IT HAS?

ROBERTO MENDEZ
PLATER - GUADALAJARA
April 24, 2008

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Hi, Roberto. Any time people start becoming intriqued by a phrase, you can be assured that every marketing manager will try to work that phrase into the description of their products. So I'm sure you will be hearing a lot about nanotechnology from companies who haven't changed a formulation in forty years :-)

With that warning dispensed with, nanotechnogy refers to engineering nanoscale or nanometer level characteristics -- i.e., something has been carefully engineered to be going on at this tiny scale. As a simple example, certain molecules are water attracting at one end and oil attracting at the other. Throw those molecules into water and you may have some kind of detergent or cleaner, but you don't have nanotechnology except in the mind of the marketing manager. Glue those molecules onto a surface as some kind of scrubber and you still don't have nanotechnology. But arrange those molecules so that all of the water grabbing ends are aligned in the same direction instead of randomly arranged, allowing the product to achieve something that could never be done before, and you probably do have nanotechnoogy.

SurFin 2008 (June 16-18, Indianapolis, Indiana) will have a session on nanoplating; if you can't attend, you will be able to buy a CD with the proceedings.

Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
April 24, 2008