Abstract
Stress corrosion cracking (SCC) is a well known form of environmental attack in low carat gold jewellery. It is desirable to have a quick, easy and cost effective way to detect SCC in alloys and prevent them from being used and later failing in their application. A facile chemical method to investigate SCC of 9 carat gold alloys is demonstrated. It involves a simple application of tensile stress to a wire sample in a corrosive environment such as 1–10 % FeCl3 which induces failure in less than 5 minutes. In this study three quaternary (Au, Ag, Cu and Zn) 9 carat gold alloy compositions were investigated for their resistance to SCC and the relationship between time to failure and processing conditions is studied. It is envisaged that the use of such a rapid and facile screening procedure at the production stage may readily identify alloy treatments that produce jewellery that will be susceptible to SCC in its lifetime.
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Suresh Bhargava is a professor and Chair of Industrial Chemistry in the School of Applied Sciences, RMIT University. His current research interests include surface modifications for developing sensors for air pollutants, tailored design of metallic and bimetallic surfaces for mercury sensing, biosensing and electrocatalysis and the formation and stabilisation of gold nanoparticles using biomolecules.
Anthony P. O’Mullane is a postdoctoral research fellow working in the materials group in the School of Applied Sciences, RMIT University. He obtained his PhD in Chemistry from University College Cork, Ireland in 2001. His current research interests are focused on the electrochemical synthesis and electrocatalytic properties of nanostructured noble metals, the formation of organic charge transfer complexes and probing electron transfer processes at the solid-solution interface.
John Hensler is a retired professor from the Department of Chemical Engineering, RMIT University. His work focused primarily on secondary metallurgy such as heat treatment, corrosion, surface engineering, casting, and welding.
B. Neumeyer was an undergraduate student at the School of Applied Sciences, RMIT University.
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Open Access This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0 ), which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
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Neumeyer, B., Hensler, J., O’Mullane, A.P. et al. A facile chemical screening method for the detection of stress corrosion cracking in 9 carat gold alloys. Gold Bull 42, 209–214 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03214936
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03214936