Solid or tubular conductors may be silver- plated to take advantage of silver's higher conductivity. This technique is particularly used at VHF to microwave frequencies where the small skin depth requires only a very thin layer of silver, making the improvement in conductivity very cost effective. Silver plating is similarly used on the surface of waveguides used for transmission of microwaves. This reduces attenuation of the propagating wave due to resistive losses affecting the accompanying eddy currents; skin effect confines such eddy currents to a very thin surface layer of the waveguide structure. Skin effect itself is not actually combatted in these cases, but the distribution of currents near the conductor's surface makes the use of precious metals (having a lower resistivity) practical. Although it has a lower conductivity than copper and silver, gold plating is also used, because unlike copper and silver, it does not corrode. A thin oxidized layer of copper or silver would have a low conductivity, and so would cause large power losses as the majority of the current would still flow through this layer.