Using sulfuric acid to test gold plated magnets?

I have a bunch of gold plated magnets that I got a while ago from K&J magnetics. I'm going to implant two of them soon and currently doing saline test (I am aware gold plating is not very reliable, but I decided to implant them anyway). When I started doing the test I also put one regular nickel plated magnet as a control. To my surprise, three days later it still barely shows any signs of corrosion.

So I've been thinking what if instead of waiting for weeks to make sure the coating is alright I use a stronger chemical? To my knowledge sulfuric acid shouldn't dissolve gold, so I did a short test run and sure enough, gold plated magnet didn't seem to react at all while a regular magnet was completely dissolved withing minutes.

Is it save to later implant magnets tested this way? Has this been done before?

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Comments

  • Yes. People have tried that method multiple times and it isn't a good test. Try 0.9% saline emersion at 38c for a few weeks. Magnets which show no degredation for as long as six months still fail rapidly with simple saline exposure.
  • Thanks, My mistake is probably not heating up the saline. I will have to think of a way to keep the temperature at 38c though

  • Well.. honestly the temp isn't all that important. Giving a standard temp lets us compare time to failure in a meaningful way. But if all youre doing is seeing which fail.. "room temp" is fine.
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