Porous lightweight materials have found increasing interest for various applications. Regular structured cellular materials might be accessible by sintering the hollow metallic particles. The properties of the final product depend to a large extent on the properties of original hollow metallic particles. Therefore, the preparation of reliable hollow spheres of defined parameters represents an important step towards the cellular solids production by means of powder metallurgy route. Electrochemical deposition of metallic coatings on the surface of hollow spherical particles facilitates the required modification of the surface corresponding to high mechanical quality. The copper hollow spheres were created on porous iron powder particles by electroless deposition. The suitable matrix for the preparation of relatively light but mechanically strong porous materials was obtained by electrochemical plating of copper hollow micro-particles by Ni layer. In this study T617-SIMS depth profiling and SEM/EDX analysis with elements mapping are used to investigate the distribution of the coating components across the surface and subsurface layer of coated hollow particles. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.