Platinum jewelry - Platinum silver

Platinum plating is the process of coating gold or silver with a layer of platinum. Silver jewelery is coated with platinum with the aim of sealing the silver surface from oxygen and hardening the silver surface. Silver with a hardness of 2.5 to 3 on the Mohs scale is a scratch-prone metal, this can be improved by coating it with platinum, which exhibits a hardness of 4 to 5, and then it is best to coat it with very hard rhodium - 6 on the Mohs scale.

By covering the platinum with rhodium, we obtain a brighter color and a very high light reflectance of 73-75%. Additionally, a rhodium plating on hard platinum will be even more durable.

Since 2021, Artipol has been using platinum before rhodium plating in some models where, due to technological reasons, hardening the silver before installing the stone was not appropriate. We also cover all chains and designs with faceted stones with platinum before rhodium plating. We make platinum rings, platinum earrings, platinum pendants, platinum bracelets, platinum necklaces and platinum chains, then we apply rhodium using the galvanic method. We get a shiny, bright, noble surface, very hard, scratch-resistant and hypoallergenic, which means that it does not cause allergic reactions.

Jewelry platinum plating

We perform platinum plating of jewelry using the PLATUNA® N1 galvanic bath of the German company UMICORE. This results in a layer of pure platinum with a bright white color and a high hardness of about 500HV (4-5 on the Mohs scale). In our workshop, we apply platinum by means of a direct current galvanic method. We apply a voltage of 2 volts for 4.5 minutes, this creates a layer of platinum which acts as a barrier that cuts the silver off from contact with oxygen. This completely protects silver against any chemical changes, because platinum is chemically inactive. In addition, platinum-plated silver exhibits a much higher surface hardness, which makes platinum jewelry more durable and more resistant to scratching. The natural color of platinum, however, is not very attractive, so we improve it by rhodium plating. Platinum-plated jewelry is then rhodium plated in the best German galvanic rhodium bath, Jentner JE88. During the process, we use a rate of 2 ampere-minutes per square decimeter (2 Amin/dm²). Due to the final rhodium finish, we call platinum and rhodium-plated jewelry "rhodium-plated jewelry", its quality, hardness and color, and a very high light reflectance of 73-75% is the same as our rhodium-plated jewelry.