ZVO Surface Days 2021

The annual congress can take place as a hybrid edition in Berlin: Now also with Meet & Greet. The ZVO has countered the imponderables caused by the coronavirus with a hybrid concept for the ZVO Surface Technology Days 2021 - a combination of online and face-to-face event elements. The presence elements of the ZVO Surface Days 2021 Hybrid Edition on September 23/24, 2021 at the Estrel Berlin will be extended by a Meet & Greet on September 22 from 6:00 p.m. in the Estrel's own beer garden. A limited number of in-person tickets and unlimited online tickets have been on sale online since June 23. The registration deadline for in-person participation is September 16, 2021.

The existing bans, restrictions and many unknowns have made planning this year's ZVO Surface Days in Berlin challenging. The current corona situation with low incidence values, the complete air conditioning of the Estrel Berlin with 100 percent fresh and exhaust air as well as the sophisticated ZVO hygiene protection and safety concept (available as a pdf on the congress homepage) have now cleared the way to welcome participants on site at the Estrel Berlin.
Admission to the event will be granted to persons with full COVID-19 vaccination protection (proof required), persons who have recovered from a COVID-19 infection (proof required) or persons with a negative COVID-19 antigen rapid test not older than 24 hours. A test center is available at the ECC Estrel for daily testing. All participants can be tested free of charge. Prior registration is required for testing. For this purpose, a separate link will be created exclusively for the ZVO Surface Days 2021 Hybrid Edition. It is possible to book an appointment in advance of the event. As the congress starts at 8:00 a.m. on September 23, the rapid tests should be booked and carried out in the afternoon/evening of the day before.

A positive rapid antigen test will result in the immediate isolation of the person tested. The person who tests positive must have a confirmation test carried out by means of PCR retesting. COVID-19-symptomatic persons are not allowed to enter the event.

A medical face mask must be worn in all movement zones in the congress and exhibition area of the ZVO Surface Days 2021 Hybrid Edition. Medical masks are surgical masks or virus-filtering masks of the standards FFP2, KN95, N95 or comparable masks. It is not necessary to wear a face mask as soon as the participant has taken a seat in the lecture hall. If the participant leaves his/her seat, the face mask must be worn again.

The three-day parallel lecture program with 49 lectures will be presented live in three lecture halls. The maximum number of people in the lecture halls is still limited. All three lecture sessions will be broadcast in parallel rooms and - for online ticket holders - streamed live. The plan is not only to stream the pure presentation view of the respective notebook, but also to transmit the live atmosphere in the lecture hall using at least one live camera per lecture hall. Although this involves a great deal of technical effort, it offers online participants significant added value.

40 companies have registered for the industrial exhibition. Registrations for the industrial exhibition are no longer possible.

The ZVO has done everything it can to ensure that the ZVO Surface Technology Days 2021 Hybrid Edition can also be held in person. It will continue to optimize preparations and processes until the day of the congress opening and adapt them to the respective corona situation. The primary goal is to hold a specialist congress without any risk of infection. The health and safety of all participants has top priority.

Key topics

In addition to the regularly recurring lecture sections such as Young Colleagues Report, Future Technologies, Wear Protection, Functional Coatings or Energy and Material Efficiency, the focus of the Surface Days will be on climate neutrality, digitalization in electroplating, innovation drivers in chemical and environmental regulation and precious metal surfaces. The congress program will be rounded off by an R&D forum, a dialogue by and with the DGO on current research and development topics in electroplating and surface technology.

Climate neutrality

A block of presentations will deal with the topic of climate neutrality, carbon footprints and CO2 footprint analyses for electroplating plants, process suppliers and plant manufacturers. The German government's climate protection plan stipulates that energy generation should be CO2-neutral by 2050. The expansion of renewable energies is a key pillar of this. Almost 43 percent of electricity in Germany now comes from biomass, sun, water or wind. However, this is not enough: The energy transition should fundamentally transform Germany's energy supply - away from fossil and nuclear fuels and towards the best possible energy efficiency and renewable energies. This transition also requires decarbonization. The lecture block will explain what is behind this term and use three decarbonization strategies to show what implementation means for companies in the electroplating and surface technology sector, which path is the right one and which subsidies are possible.

A holistic energy analysis of electroplating processes is often difficult due to the many framework conditions that play a role in the deposition process. This series of lectures will look at the different energy influences on the deposition process and how these influences can be balanced. From this holistic view of plant technology and the electroplating process, astonishing findings can be derived for saving electrical and thermal energy.

Another presentation will highlight not only the risks, but also the opportunities that can arise from the implementation of the Green Deal and climate protection at company level for the surface technology sector. The switch to circular economy strategies and objectives can also make a lasting positive contribution to the economic prospects of companies in the sector.

Digitalization in electroplating technology

Another OT lecture block revolves around the topic of digitalization, which, as for many other industrial sectors, is also becoming increasingly important for electroplating technology.

Digitalization in the context of Industry 4.0 is constantly evolving. There are also challenges for electroplating technology, but above all there are numerous opportunities to increase efficiency and quality. As part of the BMBF-funded "SmARtPlaS" project, Fraunhofer IPA is setting up a learning and research facility for the development and pilot application of Industry 4.0 approaches for electroplating technology, which will be presented in the lecture block. The research facility maps important aspects of an electroplating plant in the context of Industry 4.0. It is intended to serve as a platform for data acquisition and validation of various process and plant parameters in order to enable plant operation in a company to be more efficient, with improved quality and increased output. It is also intended to be used for further developments and as a demonstrator.

Another presentation will compare the requirements of electroplating technology with other approaches from the Industry 4.0 toolbox that are already available or under development. Using practical examples of digital applications specifically for electroplating, the link between the analog and digital worlds will be shown and their advantages explained. The focus will be on monitoring process and system values, with an outlook on the ongoing further development of system capabilities.

Every company relies on key figures to support planning, control and monitoring tasks. With digitalization, the amount of data is increasing rapidly. To prevent an uncontrolled flood of data, the data must be processed and visualized. For an efficient overview, a target group-oriented dashboard that compiles and clearly presents the relevant figures is ideal. Currently, dashboards run on monitors or tablets, but in future it will even be possible to display context-related information individually in production with the help of augmented reality (AR), as the presentation block shows.

Precious metal surfaces for high-tech products

Precious metal coatings are usually used due to their special corrosive, electrical, but also catalytic and antibacterial properties, for example in microelectronics or medical technology. What they all have in common is that the expensive precious metals are used as selectively as possible in order to avoid material loss and unnecessary costs.

A new technology for coating plastics with precious metals promises cost savings and greater sustainability. Precious metals are also needed in niche markets with very specific requirements, for example in disposable electrodes for ECGs, where silver-plated plastic elements are used for the electrical connection. Or contact lenses, whose cleaning fluids containing hydrogen peroxide require a platinum catalyst for activation, which is located in the storage containers in the form of a coated plastic element. A new process provides a solution based on precious metal-containing ink for these applications. The special feature lies in the reduction of the precious metal salts in the inks using a low-pressure plasma. The metal deposition by the reduction process thus ensures compact layers with high conductivities without the usual problem of limited durability of bath deposits in chemical depositions.
Another project deals with the different types of silver passivation and test methods. The aim is to develop a practical guide for selecting the right passivation. This is because the market is confusing due to the large number of variants and the large number of private labels. The same applies to test methods.

One presentation will also deal with the silver passivation of connectors in the automotive sector. Nowadays, these are precisely specified in the automotive industry. In the process chain up to the assembly of the connectors, no corrosion/oxidation may form on the surface, which requires a precise definition of the process prone to this defect. The presentation will shed light on the cause and behavior of corrosion/oxidation using field examples and real long-term measurements.

Chemical and environmental regulation as a driver of innovation

The inclusion of chromium trioxide in Annex XIV of the REACH regulation and a possible ban in the near future are prompting the industry to look for alternatives. In 2019, for example, the industrialization of a trivalent hard chrome process as an alternative to conventional hexavalent hard chrome plating took place as part of a funded EU project. The process is now running in beta site tests in twelve plants worldwide, including three in Germany. The lecture block will provide detailed information on practical experience, discuss the technical requirements for operation and compare the key properties of chromium (III) and chromium (VI) processes.

The use of hexavalent passivation systems in the automotive industry has been banned for 18 years. Silane, titanium-zirconium and trivalent chromium-based solutions have established themselves on the market as alternatives. In the lecture block, a newly developed cobalt- and fluoride-free passivation for aluminum, its alloys and zinc die casting will be described. In addition to trivalent chromium compounds, chain-shaped silicon compounds are essential components.
In a benchmark at an automobile manufacturer, the passivation was subjected to various corrosion tests in comparison with other systems.

The European efforts to declare boric acid as an SVHC substance led to intensive efforts by chemical suppliers to the electroplating industry to find suitable alternatives, particularly for bright nickel processes. It has now been possible to identify a substance class on the basis of which corresponding processes have been formulated that not only meet the requirements for boric acid processes, but even exceed them. The properties will be described in the lecture block.
Life cycle assessment is a recognized instrument for the systematic analysis of the environmental impact of a wide range of products, processes and services. As a rule, the entire product life cycle is considered, from raw material extraction to recycling. The aim is to identify and quantify all relevant environmental impacts and to avoid shifting problems along the life cycle. However, conducting life cycle assessments is resource-intensive and the results obtained quickly become outdated. Advances in digitalization and the use of digital twins have made it possible to further develop integrated computational life cycle engineering (IC-LCE). The combination of various existing digital twins significantly reduces the effort required to create LCA models and enables LCE as part of the product development process. A presentation describes the IC-LCE method and uses an example to show the contribution of the ecological and economic effects of surface treatments on other life cycle phases.

From process monitoring to product quality

The surface coating process is very complex and therefore prone to errors. The 2nd lecture block is therefore dedicated to monitoring and optimizing the coating process in order to ensure product quality. This is because rework or rejects increase production costs, occupy plant capacity and delay delivery times. The causes of faulty coatings often lie in the company's own processes. However, it is often difficult to precisely assign the error patterns to the respective causes and requires a great deal of experience.

For example, the water quality in the rinsing baths between active baths has a significant influence on the coating quality. One presentation therefore deals with the prevention of biofilms and algae in the water circulation system.
It is also crucial for the quality of intermediate and end products that the composition of the electrolytes used complies with the manufacturer's specifications. The bath ingredients must be monitored closely and continuously. A presentation uses two case studies to explain the advantages of thermometric titration in the process monitoring of electroplating electrolyte solutions ¬- once
in an anodizing plant and once in a chrome plating plant.

The use of polycapillary optics in X-ray fluorescence (XRF) coating thickness measurement has brought about a technical revolution. It allows the measurement of thin layers down to the nanometer range with a lateral resolution of less than 20 µm. In combination with (partial) automation, the measuring devices can be used in a highly productive and cost-saving manner for all common coating systems in the automotive, electronics and connector industries and offer extended analysis options. A presentation will introduce new developments in ED-XR table-top devices and explain their diverse applications in the quality assurance of electroplating production.

DGO Research Forum

For the first time, an R&D forum will be held as part of the ZVO Surface Treatment Days. In the block on the morning of September 23, 2021, the DGO will enter into a dialog on current research and development topics in electroplating and surface technology (see box).

The entire congress program including abstracts and speaker presentations as well as online registration at https://oberflaechentage.zvo.org