# Black Electroless Nickel

Black electroless nickel was specifically created for use in firearms manufacturing and provides superior corrosion protection and easy part identification. It's also widely utilized across other industries such as solar energy, automotive manufacturing and aerospace applications.

Deposition is achieved using autocatalytic deposition of nickel alloy without using electrical current, providing for uniform build-up on substrates with complex shapes/geometries.

## **Light Absorption**

Black electroless nickel plating provides superior light absorption properties compared to silver or gold plating, making it the go-to choice for aerospace, automotive and chemical process industries seeking high optical performance while maintaining corrosion resistance.

Sharretts Plating Company's black electroless nickel coating is applied over an underplate made of Kanigen, a low-phosphorous nickel composition. This gives the black layer its dark hue without causing visual irritation to any extent.

This coating can be applied to materials including nickel, iron, brass, copper, stainless steel and alloys - as well as aluminum casting iron and float glass applications.

As well as [**black electroless nickel plating**](https://www.astfinishing.com/plating-service/electroless-nickel-plating/) services, we also provide other plating solutions for aerospace, automotive, medical and food industry equipment. These include pre-cleaning by chemical means (grit blast or immersion), rack or barrel plating with passivation and masking before passivation to passivitate masking then hydrogen embrittlement relief baking and salt spray corrosion testing - our service offerings go well beyond black electroless nickel plating services alone!

## **Corrosion Resistance**

Black nickel plating provides excellent corrosion protection on a range of ferrous and non-ferrous metals, including copper, tellurium, beryllium brass stainless steel wrought and cast iron materials like Inconel (r), Monel (r), Kovar (17-4PH) etc.

Medium and high phosphorous versions are available, depending on your application needs, to provide corrosion resistance. Furthermore, the latter also deposit some tensile stress onto carbon steel parts, helping reduce fatigue failure risks.

These black coatings can be baked to transform their amorphous structure into a crystalline one and increase hardness, making them an excellent replacement for chromium in solar panels, automotive and aerospace applications where light absorption and reflection are essential. In neutral salt spray tests lasting 1000 hours, they withstand military decontamination protocols as well as RoHS and REACH requirements - an additional advantage over competing coatings.

## **Wear Resistance**

Black nickel plating has long been used in aerospace applications due to its superior wear resistance properties and erosion protection of helicopter rotor blades, while also serving to strengthen corrosion resistance on gun barrels, clips and other steel gun components.

Black [**electroless nickel plating**](https://www.astfinishing.com/plating-service/silver-plating/) is a chemical bath process that results in an even and durable deposit of nickel-phosphorus alloy onto any substrate. The resultant deposit features exceptional hardness, wear resistance and corrosion protection properties while offering outstanding corrosion protection capabilities.

Tacti-Black HP+ black nickel plating is an eco-friendly thick black plating that does not contain any hexavalent chromium and is RoHS compliant. This thick black plating can be applied directly onto micro-rough, textured, or blasted surfaces to produce matte-to-satin-black finishes for an attractive matte-to-satin-black appearance. This makes it a good alternative to black chromate plating that requires electrical current for deposition - making this the perfect alternative to non-RoHS compliant black chromate plating such as black chromate or hexavalent chrome plating which require electrical currents - or black chromate which must use electrical currents for deposition as these methods do not meet RoHS compliance.

## **Appearance**

Black nickel deposit is fully conductive, making it suitable for use in interconnect and EMI grounding/shielding applications. In addition, its temperature stability over short-duration exposures of 600F provides superior temperature stability as well as wear resistance with deposit uniformity of +/-0.0001 inches per side (Johnson 1980).

Black electroless nickel plating achieves its dark hue through controlled etching processes on nickel-phosphorus alloys (low, medium or high weight percent P) in an oxidizing acid solution. Etching causes nodules to form that create an intense black finish.

Kanigen's eco-friendly thick black electroless nickel, known as Night Nickel, complies with RoHS requirements and is the preferred coating to protect helicopter and propeller blades against erosion, being utilized by every major helicopter manufacturer in North America. Night Nickel's superior mechanical performance makes it biologically and mechanically superior compared to hard chrome while its corrosion-resistance properties put it ahead of copper and cadmium coatings.