Cyanide is hazardus
However, it has been used to deposit adherent gold film on aluminum substatrate precoated with nickel so as to prevent the gold film from exfoliation. Yet, I have sucessfully deposited coherent bright film of pure gold on alluminum substrate pre-coated with nickel without the use of cyanide. for spacecraft electrical connector application. After ten years, the coating still looked bright and coherently bonded to the aluminum substrate without degrading or peeling off.
Unless there is any reason Industry is still using cyanide for electrodeposition of films such as gold, I think that the practice is outdated and none value added.
Dear Bassey,
Halvanic technology is pretty old industry. In start a formulation of electrolytes for metal's electrodeposition was done by simply method of adding new components and checking results. Cyanide electrolytes give a stable result of very good quality. And workers in Halvanic industry are usually conservative persons which do not wish to change process if it give stable results. Of course it is toxic and need strong security control. So if you have your own technology of non-toxic electrolytes, you will have a lot of hard discussions with conservative engineers and workers. ))
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