Titanium and jewelry

Pure titanium has stable properties, bright silver color, high toughness and light weight. Its weight is only 60% of iron, 50% of copper, 40% of silver and 25% of gold. It has become a very fashionable jewelry material. The silver-gray tone of pure titanium has a good performance whether it is highly polished, mercerized, and matt treated. It is the most suitable metal material to reflect the essence of jewelry alongside the precious metal of platinum and gold. It has been applied in modern jewelry design worldwide, and it is a novel and unique jewelry material so far. Pure titanium is resistant to wear and corrosion, even aqua regia, which can dissolve gold, has little effect to titanium.
In addition, pure titanium is able to maintain a good mechanical properties at high and low temperatures, therefore pure titanium jewelry will not be deformed or fade easily, and it is easy to maintain, just wipe gently with a cotton cloth to restore the luster. The longer the usage time, the better the color. More importantly, titanium is a biophilic metal, and even being implanted into human body, it will not cause any impact and harm to the body. However, due to the high strength of the pure state and the high elasticity of the metal, the ductility is poor therefore difficult to process. It is difficult to cast pure titanium with ordinary equipment, and it cannot be perfectly welded with ordinary technique, so it is difficult to apply in large-scale production. At present, many of titanium jewelry on the market are made of titanium alloys.
Another feature of titanium metal is that by controlling the synthesis process, coatings of different tones can be obtained. Most rare metal jewelry is limited by the inherent color, and only have two typical color of gold and silver, which limits the ability of jewelry design in some degree. Titanium can generate a variety of colors after special processing, such as gold, yellow, blue, purple pink, greyish-green and many other colors, and the color saturation is relatively high, which is attractive with metallic luster. Such rich colors cannot be achieved by traditional rare metals. Color is an indispensable factor for the art of jewelry. With the help of titanium, designer's art works can finally present a colorful artistic effect.
From the perspective of modeling, titanium is hard in texture and light in weight. Today, with increasing emphasis on wearing comfort, titanium metal is undoubtedly a good jewelry making material that caters to this concept. In addition, titanium metal can achieve not only the effect of engraving, but also three-dimensional relief effect. With such a variety of modeling methods, titanium can perfectly meet the needs of modern jewelry technology.
In addition to pure titanium, titanium nitride also plays an important role in jewelry materials due to its golden color. Since ancient times, gold has been the kind of precious metal that people values the most. Gold can be a good store of value as the world's universal currency in circulation. However, the resources of gold are scarce and it is often expensive to obtain a high-quality gold product. In order to save natural gold resources and reduce the price of jewelry, people began to look for other options, so imitation gold plating, imitation gold paint and other technologies came into being.
Titanium nitride is a desirable substitute for gold plating in this case. Titanium nitride is a golden yellow powder formed by the chemical reaction of titanium metal and nitrogen. Using a method called "glow discharge chemical vapor deposition", titanium nitride is plated on the surface of the jewelry, and imitation gold products with the same color and luster can be obtained. More interestingly, the color tone of titanium nitride can also be controlled by the conditions of the coating. If the nitrogen content is controlled to be lower under other condition that remains unchanged, the titanium nitride will appears pale gold, while If the nitrogen content is high, it will appear golden red. If the ratio of nitrogen and titanium is controlled to remain unchanged, as the current increases during processing, titanium nitride will gradually transition from gold to copper. In addition to being used in jewelry, watches, and handicrafts, titanium nitride can also be used as coatings for furniture, lighting, tableware, and architecture.
We can often see the word "titanium gold" in many advertisement, so what exactly is "titanium gold"? In general, the so-called "titanium gold" refers to pure titanium. Although titanium is used to in jewelry making, unlike gold and platinum, titanium is not a rare-precious metal and is relatively abundant. The reason why titanium in the jewelry industry sometimes called gold is mainly from its desirable performance. In addition to pure titanium, titanium nitride is also called "titanium gold" in many research papers. The reason may be that titanium nitride has the same color as gold and often appears as imitation gold jewelry. In order to distinguish it from real gold, so the name "titanium gold" is introduced.