Cadmium plating (or cad. plating) offers a long list of technical advantages such as excellent corrosion resistance even at relatively low thickness and in salt atmospheres, softness and malleability, freedom from sticky and/or bulky corrosion products, galvanic compatibility with aluminum, freedom from stick-slip thus allowing reliable torquing of plated threads, can be dyed to many colors and clear, has good lubricity and solderability, and works well either as a final finish or as a paint base.

If environmental concerns matter, in most aspects cadmium plating can be directly replaced with gold plating as it shares most of the material properties, but gold is more expensive and cannot serve as a paint base.

Cadmium plating offers an exceptional bonding surface for adhesives, such as those increasingly used in aircraft manufacturing, and is the preferred coating for salt-water environments. Additional advantages of cadmium plating include: low electrical resistance; outstanding conductivity; superior solderability; favorable galvanic coupling with aluminum; and excellent natural lubricity, which results in prevention of galling and a low coefficient of friction. Furthermore, the corrosion products of cadmium are less significant that those of other plated coatings such as zinc. These characteristics are especially useful in applications where components will be repeatedly disassembled and reassembled, such as in scheduled maintenance of aircraft. Thus cadmium plating continues to be critical to the aerospace industry . Cadmium plated surfaces resist mold or bacteria growth.

In some limited applications, zinc-nickel alloy plating may be an acceptable alternative to cadmium plating. Please contact Chem Processing for more information about this substitution.

Cadmium plating is not recommended for spaceflight applications due to its propensity to sublimate, outgas and spontaneously form whiskers in a vacuum. See NASA's NPSL page on cadmium plating for more information.