The review of literature available on pulse plating has been attempted. Though pulse plating initially was used to plate copper and gold, the survey shows that extensive work on other metals such as nickel, chromium, palladium, zinc, silver etc. has also been done. Apart from single metals, the pulse plating techniques were also extended to plating numerous alloys of nickel, chromium, gold, palladium etc. Developments that have taken place during the last three decades include the use of pulse plating in the areas like anodising, deposition of composite materials, amorphous alloy and semi-conductor plating. Mass transport effects, effect of pulse current on surface roughening and other morphological effects are presented in this paper. This survey also includes the theoretical aspects and mechanism of pulse plating. © 1990.