Analysis of the substrate effect on the nucleation and growth mode of electrodeposited cobalt on copper and graphite electrodes

Electrochemical Nucleation and Growth of Cobalt from Methanesulfonic Acid Electrolyte

“…Up to date, cobalt has been electrodeposited from chloride, 1,2,10-12 sulfate 13 and citrate [14][15][16] aqueous baths as well as from the urea-choline chloride-CoCl 2 melt 17 and deep eutectic solvent, 18 the influence of deposition parameters on current efficiency, 12 deposit morphology, 19 structure 20 and magnetic properties 19,21,22 was also investigated. With respect to the electrocrystallization mechanism, the influence of many factors such as cobalt concentration, 2 pH, 23,24 temperature, 25 substrate [26][27][28] and ultrasound 29 on the nucleation and growth of cobalt has been reported in previous studies, however, it should be emphasized here that most researches were performed in weakly-acidic and dilute solution, only the work performed at high pH by Grujicic and Pesic 23 and the work performed in concentrated solution by Bertazzoli et al 24 were noted as an exception, no research on the electrocrystallization mechanism from strongly-acidic and concentrated solution has been documented. Furthermore, in the past two decades, methanesulfonic acid (MSA) electrolyte has attracted increasing interest and is demonstrated to be a promising electrolyte in the electrodeposition of metal and their alloys, 30,31 when it is employed to the electrodeposition of cobalt, the MSA electrolyte has comparable high conductivity as the hydrochloric acid electrolyte but is less corrosive, 31 in particular, it avoids the formation of Cl 2 gas on anode, 12 consequently, the MSA electrolyte may be a suitable alternative of the traditional chloride bath, however, research on the electrodeposition of cobalt from MSA electrolyte remains unreported.…”

Effects of Deposition Potential and Temperature on Co(II) Reduction and Electrocrystallization for Preparing Nanocrystalline Co Coatings in Ethylene Glycol Solution

“…Furthermore, the value is compared with that of the previously reported diffusion coefficient of Co(II) species in different solutions including aqueous solutions [45][46][47][48][49][50][51] and nonaqueous systems, 6,18,20,36,[39][40][41][52][53][54][55][56][57] and then shown in Table I. As shown in Table I, the diffusion coefficient of Co(II) in EG is with around one or two order of magnitude larger than that of Co(II) in ChCl-urea, 6,18 some aprotic ILs(including BMIMBF 4 , 20 BMPTFSI 56 and BMPTFSA 57 ) and other else nonaqueous organic solution (acetamide 54,55 ).…”

Potentiostatic controlled nucleation and growth modes of electrodeposited cobalt thin films on n-Si(1 1 1)

“…We will do it in a future paper. Here, the very important point is that it is not possible to determine the quantity of deposition Co by a deposition-dissolution experimental procedure (integrating the Co-dissolution peak over time while sweeping the electrode potential), as described in references [37][38][39]. So, authors that are avoided of the phenomenon used other experimental methods like Rutherford Back Scattering to determine the thickness of the electrodeposit [15,19].…”