Word: mattox
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...that his new metal-plating system is all polished up and promises to revolutionize many industrial processes, Physicist Donald M. Mattox of Albuquerque's Sandia Corp. is faced with a persistent question. "People keep asking me why no one thought of it before," he says, and he has quit trying to find an answer. His best guess is that prac tical metallurgists knew too little theory to tackle the problem, while basic research scientists, who know enough theory, were unconcerned with such practical work...
Hard-Hitting Ions. Mattox supplied just the right combination of theory and practicality to handle a problem that has grown as steadily as expanding modern technology. Nowadays, nearly every metal gets plated for one reason or another-for beauty, against corrosion, to guard against wear, or to reduce friction. But all too often the plating does not stick tightly enough. The substrate (the metal to be plated) covers itself with a film of adhering gas or oxide that cannot be cleaned away; the plating material is deposited on the film, not on the underlying metal, forming a weak bond that...
After detailed study, Mattox decided that all present plating methods have the same weakness: as they are applied, the atoms of plating materials do not hit the substrate hard enough. Mattox gets around this difficulty by using a chamber filled with argon gas. Inside it the piece of metal to be plated is hooked up as the cathode (negative pole) of an electrical circuit. The plating material forms the anode (positive pole). When a high-voltage direct current is passed through the circuit, positive argon ions fly across the gap and smack the substrate so hard that they blast...
...Atoms. Since argon is an inert gas, its ions do not stick. But when Mattox heats the anode, the plating material begins to evaporate. Its own ions jump the gap and stick fast to the perfectly clean substrate. The coating that results adheres as strongly as if it were part of the underlying metal...
...Mattox is sure that his method has a great future in space-age construction that calls for the coating of such exotic metals as molybdenum and uranium that other plating systems cannot handle. The Mattox method can even plate the brittle ceramic parts essential to giant modern missiles and miniaturized computers-giving them such stick-tight coatings that they can be handled like metal components and joined together by brazing or soldering...