Medical Device Gold Plating Services

Medical devices…

…often have functional coatings for enhanced performance and other benefits such as bio-compatibility. Since medical device components typically have complex geometries combined with porous base materials, a coating process may need to be applied to result in surface uniformity and high throwing power. 

ProPlate® has plating processes and quality systems that are proactively designed to meet the stringent requirements of the FDA and ISO-13485 standards. Repeatability, reliability, traceability, and performance all have to be maintained routinely to the highest standards of our OEM customers. We strive to be on the front end of a design before the production phase with all of our medical device manufacturing industry customers.

Benefits of Medical Device Gold Plating

Gold possesses a myriad of beneficial attributes, which make it one of the optimum metal finishes for medical device components. Gold is considered soft compared to other metals, so it is very malleable, making it great for shape-memory devices such as Nitinol (Ni-Ti) and other high precision medical instruments.

Gold is highly corrosion-resistant, meaning it does not oxidize in the open air, and elements such as moisture or acid will not corrode away at Gold over time. This is an important characteristic for a component, especially for sterilization processes of medical devices and elements of exposure when a device is implanted inside the human body.

Gold is biocompatible, which means it will not cause any negative or toxic reactions when it comes in contact with tissues, skin, organs, and other parts of the body, inside or out. Because Gold is a highly dense metal, it is highly radiopaque, meaning it is opaque to x-rays or similar radiation. Gold plating is also an advantageous method of rendering a medical component brightly visible inside the body under a fluoroscopy machine. For example, a coronary stent needs radiopacity to be placed accurately by a catheter in an artery. Gold is an excellent electrical conductor even over long periods, making Gold plating suitable for connector pins, electrical switch contacts, and other applications where electrical contacts occur intermittently.

Gold electroplating can join dissimilar metals together by enabling them to be soldered together in situations once impossible, such as welding or soldering stainless steel with Nickel-Titanium/Nitinol (Ni-Ti).