Application guides
Working procedures written by the people who make the salts: quantities, conditions, what the colours mean and what to do when it goes wrong. Each guide links to the compounds it uses, with live pricing.
Preparing a platinum plating bath
Platinum is electroplated for two quite different reasons: to give an electrode a huge active surface (platinum black), or to put a thin, bright, corrosion-proof layer on jewellery, connectors and anodes. The baths are different, but both start from the chloroplatinates. This guide sets out what to make, from which salt, and how to run it.
22 Oct 2026 · about 1400 words · 6 min readRead the guide →Silver nitrate for mirror silvering
Chemical silvering is the same reaction as the Tollens test, scaled up and controlled: ammoniacal silver nitrate reduced by a sugar onto glass that has been cleaned and sensitised so the silver sticks. This guide covers the two classic methods, how much silver nitrate a job needs, and the one hazard that must never be ignored.
22 Oct 2026 · about 1300 words · 6 min readRead the guide →Using palladium acetate in Suzuki and Heck couplings
Palladium(II) acetate is the most used precatalyst in cross-coupling because it is cheap, air-stable and works with almost any ligand. Here are reliable starting conditions for the two reactions it is bought for most often, the ligand decisions that matter, and what to do when a coupling stalls.
22 Oct 2026 · about 1300 words · 6 min readRead the guide →Synthesising gold nanoparticles with chloroauric acid
Almost every gold nanoparticle in the literature starts as tetrachloroaurate(III) in water. This guide gives working quantities for the three syntheses most laboratories need, explains what controls particle size, and lists the mistakes that turn a wine-red sol purple.
22 Oct 2026 · about 1400 words · 6 min readRead the guide →
Browse the compounds
- Silver compoundsSeven silver compounds made in Dublin: nitrate, oxide, carbonate, acetate, sulfate, chloride and powder. Lot CoA with silver assay, spot pricing, EU shipping.
- Gold saltsChloroauric acid, sodium and potassium tetrachloroaurate made in Dublin with lot gold assay. For nanoparticles, catalysts, plating and gold complexes.
- Palladium catalystsPalladium(II) acetate, chloride and nitrate and the tetrachloropalladates, made in Dublin with lot assay. Precursors for cross-coupling, Pd/C and plating.
- Platinum saltsChloroplatinic acid, potassium and ammonium hexachloroplatinate and potassium tetrachloroplatinate, made in Dublin with lot assay. Catalysts, plating, Pt(II).