Ask an Expert: Electroplating

[fastrunner101]

Hello! I'm doing a project on comparing different types of metal plating onto materials. The only materials I have are Tin, Zinc, Copper, sulfate for all three of those metals, and general laboratory equipment. I would like to know if it is necessary that if I were to do copper electroplating, my plating solution (buffer) would it have to be copper sulfate? Can it be tin sulfate or zinc sulfate? I also would like to know if you can refer me to any reliable precedent sources about an experiment involving the information that could be citied in our research proposal.

[norman40]

Hi fastrunner101,

Copper sulfate is needed to provide a source of copper ions in solution when electroplating copper. Tin or zinc sulfates won't work.

I'm not sure what kinds of sources might relate to your experiment. But an online search on “copper electroplating” will return numerous articles. Links to a few examples are listed below. The last one is a scholarly review of the topic and it includes a lengthy list of references.

http://www.docbrown.info/page01/ExIndCh ... stry04.htm

https://www.chemedx.org/blog/easy-coppe ... redox-unit

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/abfd/7 ... c62c41.pdf

I hope this helps. Please post again if you have more questions.

A. Norman