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Are there any practical, sane and safe solutions that can be used for silver elctroplating/electrolysis that are purchasable?

Objective is to create silver crystals, but without having evil cyanide floating around the house... copper I can handle with copper sulphate. Silver has me stuck...

Any ideas?

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  • $\begingroup$ Silver nitrate? $\endgroup$
    – NotEvans.
    Commented Jul 22, 2016 at 17:34

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I've never tried to grow big crystals or anything, but we commonly use 30 mM silver nitrate in 1 M $\ce{NH4OH}$ for electrodepositing silver onto metal (usually gold) electrodes. If you don't care what kind of surface finish you end up with, it will work, but it makes a fairly rough film that can be somewhat easily removed with abrasion. The tricky part is trying to get very smooth and adherent films. It seems that there are still not any good replacements for electroplating from cyanide-containing solutions, for decorative or engineering purposes where the deposit will be subject to wear or has to look nice.

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  • $\begingroup$ As both responders above mention, silver nitrate should work well, especially fo small crystals. See youtube.com/watch?v=fnyBldC4Ra4 $\endgroup$
    – DrMoishe Pippik
    Commented Jul 22, 2016 at 20:29
  • $\begingroup$ There isn't a safe option is what I was afraid of... but I wasn't enough of a chemist to be sure :( $\endgroup$
    – user2702772
    Commented Jul 22, 2016 at 20:38

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