Rhenium is used as an alloying element for many special materials in high-temperature applications, such as turbine blades, catalytic converter, and thermocouples. These applications require a high melting temperature of the materials, which can be achieved by a small amount of rhenium in the alloy. Rhenium has the second highest melting temperature after tungsten at 3186 °C [Naor et al., 2009]. Furthermore, at high temperatures, rhenium has a good resistance to creep and fatigue as well as to chemical reactions that occur in this temperature range. Due to its scarcity on earth and the resulting high prices, a broad application of rhenium using conventional manufacturing processes such as primary shaping like casting is not economical. [Naor et al., 2010]

A resource-conserving and economical process, on the other hand, is galvanic deposition, in which the required application-dependent properties can be produced in the form of a thin layer on inexpensive components. Rhenium can be electroplated from aqueous solutions, but only with poor current yields of around 10 %. With the aid of co-deposition of nickel, the current yield can be increased to approx. 90 % in laboratory scale. With the nickel-rhenium alloys depositions, rhenium deposition rates of up to 70 wt% could be realized. Furthermore, the layer properties can be influenced by the electrolyte composition and the process parameters.

The deposited Ni-Re layers were characterized using scanning electron microscopy-EDX, laser scanning microscopy and Vickers microhardness testing.