What Does
Anodic Cleaning Mean?
Anodic cleaning is a pre-treatment procedure utilized prior to any plating. This cleaning method makes use of direct currents (DC) that cause a foaming action on the surrounding areas, thus eliminating dirt and other contaminants that normal cleaning cannot remove.
It is commercially important in terms of separating elements from sources, like ores with the aid of electrolytic cells.
Anodic cleaning is also known as electro cleaning or reverse-current cleaning.
Corrosionpedia Explains Anodic Cleaning
The term anodic cleaning comes from the use of cathodic cleaning utilizing an anodic procedure. Cathodic cleaning is highly efficient in terms of loosening dirt and contaminants present on a material's surface. This type of cleaning also behaves similarly to the plating process in several ways.
In anodic cleaning, the stamper, or work, is interrelated to the anode or positive rectifier. This is why it is known as reverse-current cleaning—because the polarity is the reverse of that in the initial cathodic step. At a certain point in the process, oxygen is freed at the stamper's surface once the current is freed. In such a case, the oxygen causes the passivation of the work by building oxidating layers, which ties up all positive charges present on the surface where a group of stampers might otherwise adhere.
Thus, anodic cleaning is broadly utilized for passivation. This makes the process different from electroplating. It is very significant in the process of separation, just like in separating nickel from its surrounding material. This can be entirely different in the case of electroplating, where permanent adhesion between the substrate and deposited nickel is formed.