In its final issue of 2014, the journal Transactions of the Institute of Metal Finishing selected an article written by researchers from CIDETEC for its front cover. This journal covers international issues relating to surface finishes, surface engineering and surface functionalization, both for basic research and industrial applications, and it is ranked in the second quartile in the area of Surfaces, Coatings and Films.

The article, entitled "Advanced Ni–W coatings obtained by the combination of pulse plating and chemometric techniques", was the result of work performed by researchers from the Surfaces Division of CIDETEC, from the University of the Basque Country’s Department of Applied Chemistry and from the ELECTRODEP laboratory from the University of Barcelona’s Department of Physical Chemistry. It details the results obtained using chemometric techniques for the electrodeposition of Ni-W coatings using current pulses, analysing the effect of the experimental parameters on the structure and properties of those coatings.

The issue in which this research was published is devoted to pulse plating.  The journal chose one of the figures included in the article for its front cover, due to the significance of the results obtained. That figure shows response surfaces obtained through a multivariate analysis which establishes the relationship between the pulse parameters and the properties of the NiW coatings that were developed. There has been limited use of chemometric methods to study and optimise pulse electrodeposition processes and this is one of the innovations of the paper.