Micron plating is more durable and qualitative than gold plating – at least 1.0 gold micron is deposited onto a base metal like brass (also referred to as “heavy gold plating”), and has comparable quality like gold vermeil. Gold plating, on the other hand, has a very thin layer of gold (~0.175 micron) so the gold can quickly fade off the metallic jewelry.
The term micron simply refers to one micrometer = 0.000001 meter = 0.001 millimeter.