Bronze as alternative for replacement of nickel in intermediate layers underneath gold coatings

A Electrochimica Acta é uma revista científica revisada por pares que abrange todos os aspectos da eletroquímica. É a publicação oficial da Sociedade Internacional de Eletroquímica e é publicada bimestralmente. De acordo com o Journal Citation Reports, o periódico possui um fator de impacto de 4.086 em 2013

Publicar este artigo na revista da Sociedade Internacional de Eletroquímica foi motivo de muita alegria e orgulho. Foi o resultado de muito esforço e várias revisões de todos os envolvidos, com ênfase a minha orientadora Dra. Isolda Costa e auxiliada pela Co-orientadora Dra. Maysa Terada.

Abstract

The nickel layer has an important role in the quality of gold layers which is to provide a smooth and bright surface for gold plating. However, it has been related to skin allergy problems. Due to this, nickel for jewelry or any application that involves skin contact has been increasingly abolished from many countries and prohibited in the European Community. In order to avoid the problem of nickel contact dermatitis, other types of intermediate layers have been proposed in the last years. The aim of this work is to characterize the corrosion resistance bronze used as intermediate layer, underneath gold plate and with an intermediate layer of palladium to improve the corrosion resistance of gold layer. The corrosion resistance was characterized by electrochemical techniques, mainly, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and potentiodynamic polarization curves. Also, the surface after electrochemical tests was observed by scanning electron microscopy. The results of this work showed that the addition of an intermediate layer of palladium between bronze and gold layers presented the best corrosion resistance among the tested conditions.