Slick as a whistle, hard as a rock

Nibron, a coating of nickel, thallium, and boron, improves wear and hardness on aerospace and automotive components. Several military jets, including the Air Force's new fighter, the F-22 Raptor, have engine components coated with Nibron to reduce wear. This chart shows that Nibron is harder than nickel-phosphorous alloys when electrolessly plated, and after heat treatment is harder than chrome. Nibron evenly coats even the most complex structure, such as this engine bearing support for an airplane. Electronic housings coated with Nibron resist wear. Ametallic coating of nickel, thallium, and boron, outperforms other aerospace coatings such as hard chrome and nickel-phosphorus when it comes to hardness and reducing wear. Classified as a tribologic thin-film coating and called Nibron, it extends the life of aerospace components, as well as improving their reliability and durability while increasing mean time between failures. In the Air Force, for example, maintenance crews were having a hard time with machine-gun mounts on certain warplanes. High-pressure loading and vibrations led to unacceptable levels of galling. After testing several friction-reducing coatings, the Air Force tested Nibron. It showed no signs of deterioration after 250,000 test cycles. The next-best candidate, hard chrome, showed significant wear after only 35,000 cycles. Nibron is deposited directly on a variety of substrates, including titanium, carbon, tool and stainless steels, Inconel, and most exotic alloys. But it isn't as compatible with some metallic substrates, including magnesium, aluminum, tungsten carbide, and those with high zinc and molybdenum content. However, methods have been identified for successfully applying Nibron on aluminum and developments for coating magnesium are underway. Nibron is usually applied using electroless plating. The process creates platings by reducing metals in a solution under controlled temperatures and pHs. Using a reducing agent containing boron, Nibron platings are "grown" at 0.0005 to 0.001 in./hr. Nibron coatings are well