Have you ever notice about your sterling silver jewelry, whether it is rhodium plated or not? If not, the sterling silver can turn to dark color or tarnish in the easy wayand it is not recommended to go with this piece. What is the function of rhodium with sterling silver then?
Rhodium is a metal that is considered as the best in all platinum family with resistance to corrosion and tarnish. It appears to show the most tarnish resistant among the platinum metals group. And no surprise to know that rhodium is the most expensive metal in this group, the price for rhodium is 4x more expensive than platinum and about 9x more expensive than gold. With this expensive price, people cannot really afford for the rhodium jewelry, but they have use this metal in the other way, for sterling silver coating material instead.
Sterling silver is an alloy of silver metal with other metal, in general copper. The available of sterling silver is good for jewelry maker as this alloy has suitable property for making jewelry pieces. However, disadvantage of sterling silver jewelry is about its reaction with oxygen in the air. The reaction will leave a dark sport or tarnish on jewelry piece. People learn to cover the piece with rhodium, to prevent this reaction. By this way, the jewelry piece will stay longer with its beauty as you can expect. The plated rhodium jewelry is not only to protect your sterling silver jewelry from tarnish but also prevent the piece from any chance in surface discoloring from any environmental conditions. The cover of rhodium is hard enough to prevent any scratching and abrasion for any incidents. The use of plated rhodium over sterling silver piece brings a great piece of work to jeweler. It will combine all good points of these two metals together, for the reasonable jewelry price for most people.
The other good point for rhodium is about its hypoallergenic. People do get allergy to nickel which is always mixed in white gold or sterling silver. The cover of these metals with rhodium can prevent this allergy and allow allergenic people to wear the jewelry pieces without any problem. Now, it’s time for you to start looking for the sterling silver jewelry plated with rhodium.
