Electroless brassing of historical artefacts

The topic of this work was the investigation of an alternative brassing technique consisting of electroless zinc plating of a copper object in a strongly alkaline solution and subsequent annealing to achieve a characteristic brass appearance. Within the scope of the work was the determination of the mechanism of zinc deposition on the copper surface, the optimisation of the NaOH concentration (30 and 40 wt. %), time of deposition (5-120 min), as well as temperature (150 and 200 °C) and annealing time (15 – 60 min). Electrochemical methods (potentiodynamic curves and open-circuit potential), metallography, X-ray diffraction (XRD), and glow-discharge optical emission spectroscopy (GD-OES) were used to study the brassing mechanism. Electrochemical measurements have shown that zinc powder significantly decreases the surface potential of copper to the value of zinc itself and also acts as a reducing agent. The diffusion of zinc in copper was found to occur during the primary deposition of zinc with the formation of the γ phase (Cu₅Zn₈). The optimal NaOH concentration is 40 wt.% and the deposition time is 60 min. The optimal conditions of annealing are 200 °C and 60 min. The primary γ phase is transformed during the annealing process into β and α phases.