Zero-waste Electroplating: Transforming the Chemistry of Silver Coating for a Sustainable Watch Industry

Here you can read more about the challenge.

Chemistry of Silver Coating

As every industry, the watch industry also must turn towards sustainable, eco-friendly manufacturing.
Among the multiple processes needed to obtain the final product, coating watch dials is a crucial step, as it enhances the technical performance and aesthetic appearance.
Silver electroplating is commonly used for this purpose, which involves the galvanic deposition of a thin layer of metal onto a solid substrate, such as watch dials.

Current methods involve using a large volume chemical bath that dissolves the silver as a cyanide salt. Unfortunately, the bath loses its properties over time and must be disposed of. In industry this means, 100 liters of chemical baths are discarded regularly, leading to

• environmental impact through further treatment of the baths with other chemicals in order to neutralize the baths
• possible safety problems due to the dissolved chemicals
• a loss of productivity during bath replacement
  

Challenge and Key-Questions

Together with a major swiss watchmaking company we're therefore looking for novel, innovative chemistry approaches for silver electroplating that

• would not involve cyanides and/or
• would increase the time of usage of the bath without impact on the coating quality
• would be easily recyclable or preferably upcycled (e.g. with addition of silver ions) and reintroduced in the electroplating process after a cleaning/regeneration step
  

There are two possible ways to tackle this challenge:

Innovative optimization of the currently used cyanide-based silver electroplating through upcycling:

• How can an electroplating bath be made more sustainable, regenerated, and upcycled in the most sustainable way (including process and chemistry analysis)?

New alternatives for the cyanide-approach that could replace current practice:

• Are there other alternatives for silver electroplating based on new electrochemical reactions that are more sustainable and efficient?

Note: it is utterly important that the same coating quality for the watch dials is ensured as silver cyanide is widely used for the efficiency/ quality of the final product.

Via the tab “Solution Guidance” you can find more relevant background information and inspiring guiding questions to tackle this challenge.

Goal and potential partnership after the Challenge

The desired goal is to jointly design a solution that can be introduced into the current industry processes. If a Proof-of-Concept is successfully developed during the challenge, there is the opportunity for a pilot project or different forms of cooperation or internalizing the innovation depending on the team and the solution, in addition to the prize money.

Participation is especially targeted to startups, companies, or researchers.