Our production programm is based on the stripping of copper out of sulfuric acidic baths and the stripping of nickel out of sulfamat baths. Especially for copper the electrical (and of course heat-) conductivity is of a great importance, because it is at room temperature the second best conductor and also very cost-efficient.
Galvano-forming uses it preferably for the production of high frequenzy pieces where it can be found as plating for other pieces and as independent (supporting) material as well.
Examples of our product lineup are waveguides (Launcher, junctions, horns/taper, arrays, bragg refelctors and many more), hollow body resonators (Cavities) and cooled/non-cooled HF – mirrors.
Silver due to its low firmness and its relatively high prices can only be used as coating and the advantage is just about 10%. Oxide coatings can be built by copper as well as silver. If oxidation in high frequenzy pieces shall be prevented there is only gilding left. But – apart from the costs – the conductivity of gold is about 30% worse than the silver’s (and we are talking about pure gold here. Hardgoldbaths which are common in the board production have a lot worse conductivity.).