How to buy rhodium so I can make rhodium plating solution?

A. Hi, cousins.

Precious metals like rhodium should be available around the world. You might start at kitco.com so you are up to date on pricing. It may be hard to get a stable supply though because it's probably reserved for steady customers when it's in short supply. The particular problem with rhodium is that it is so rare that nobody anywhere mines it; rather, it is a byproduct from mining and refining platinum. So, when a lot of platinum is being mined and refined, rhodium is available for about the same price as gold. When platinum mining is down but the demand for rhodium continues, the price of rhodium can shoot up to 20X the cost of gold and small users probably can't get it at any price.

Getting from a nugget of rhodium to a useable and robust rhodium plating solution is not an easy trick, but letter 30419 is a starting point. You might already know this, but for the benefit of those who don't, users virtually never make plating solutions, they buy them. It's probably easier to buy a properly formulated highly purified rhodium plating solution from a company that has done years of research and can assist you when you need help than it is to buy a chunk of rhodium metal. Good luck.

Regards,

A. Hi cousin Hemang. Nobody can condense a manufacturing process like that into a reply here, any more than they can answer how to design & build an airliner or perform an appendectomy in a paragraph or two … but what we can do is steer you towards good resources!

I don't think you'll find much in the technical literature, but have you spent some quality time with google patents or USPTO patents so you clearly understand the claims about what constitutes a good rhodium plating solution and what processes they employed to achieve it? It looks to me like there's a lot of great info available simply by searching the patent databases for "rhodium plating". Good luck!

Regards,