Medical Device Silver Plating Services

Medical devices and equipment…

…often have specifications of functional metal coatings for enhanced performance, such as anti-microbial or thermally conductive properties. Due to medical device components typically having complex geometries combined with porous base materials, a coating or selective coating may be needed to result in surface uniformity and lubricity.

ProPlate® continues to be an industry-leading electroplating supplier for the medical device, equipment, and instrument manufacturing markets. Continuing to develop engineered plating solutions to advance medical technology, assist medical professionals, and improve patient outcomes is ProPlate’s® core competency. To work with ProPlate® on your medical component plating project,

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.

Silver Electroplating for Medical Device Components & Instruments

Silver plating is often a selected metal finish option in the medical device and equipment manufacturing industry. Although Gold, Rhodium, and Palladium finishes can present high-performance options in many cases, Silver offers lower-cost performance-enhancing properties depending on the functionality.

Silver and selective silver plating are commonly specified metals for electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, thermal compression bonding, weld-ability, and antimicrobial properties. ProPlate® is an industry-leading expert in the silver plating (matte, semi-bright, and bright) of medical device components.

Benefits of Selecting Silver Plating for Medical Devices

Silver possesses several beneficial attributes, making it one of the most favorable metal finishes for medical device components. Silver is highly ductile, making it great for shape-memory devices such as Nitinol (Ni-Ti) and other high-precision medical instruments. Due to its semi-precious nature, Silver offers excellent corrosion resistance. However, Silver can tarnish when exposed to sulfur-bearing compounds. Silver sulfide formation needs to be considered when designing a Silver electroplated medical component. It is essential to note that tarnished Silver still conducts the same as Silver that is not tarnished. Silver is the highest electrically and thermally conductive metal, and it exhibits the highest level of optical reflectivity in the visible range.

Gold vs Silver

Gold plating offers the highest level of reflectivity in the IR (Infrared) range. Due to silvers superior electrical and thermal conductivity it is frequently used in medical electronics applications, such as electrosurgical and energy based devices. 99.9% pure, matte silver electroplating also provides outstanding solder-ability, wire bonding and thermo-compression bonding. Silver plating is advantageous for medical device components largely due to its antimicrobial and antibacterial characteristics. It is the lightest weight of the precious metals group, making it ideal for micro components. Lastly, silver plating renders a surface lubricious which is useful especially for high temperature applications that are critical to exhibit anti-galling and anti-seizing attributes.