Pd electrodeposition in ionic liquids has been mostly limited to the formation of thin films, which has restricted its potential application to the electronics and decorative industry only. The electrochemical synthesis of nanostructured Pd could broaden its applications to the catalyst industry as well. In 1-butyl-3-methylimmidazolium chloride, the Pd deposits reported so far have had uncontrolled growth without any well-defined morphology. In this study, we report controlled synthesis of Pd nanoparticles with well-defined morphology on pre-etched Ni electrodes. Potentiostatic pulse deposition was used to synthesize these Pd nanoparticles, which had spherical shape and unimodal size distribution. In contrast, thin film-like morphology was deposited during direct electrodeposition. The size of the Pd nanospheres was controlled by controlling the duty cycle; the size of the Pd nanospheres increased from 14.8 ± 3.5 to 30.8 ± 6.6 nm when the duty cycle decreased from 0.5 to 0.2. The size of the Pd nanospheres showed linear dependence on the duty cycle giving excellent control. X-ray diffraction analysis revealed face-centered cubic crystalline microstructure for the Pd particles. The analysis also suggested that the amount of Pd increased by decreasing the duty cycle. The surface of the Pd deposits was dominated by metallic state as revealed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Electrodeposited Pd has applications as catalysts, interconnects, jewelry and ornaments.1 Electrodeposition has also been considered for recovery of fission palladium.2 Ionic liquids (ILs) are considered promising electrolytes for Pd electrodeposition because hydrogen embrittlement, which is commonly a problem for Pd electrodeposition in aqueous systems, could be avoided by proper choice of IL. Different types of ILs have been studied for this purpose such as chloroaluminates, 20 Some of the work has also been done with the deep eutectic solvents (DES) choline chloride/urea and choline chloride/ethylene glycol.14,21 Pd-containing liquid metal salts (LMS), which are ILs with metal ions coordinated to the cations are also being explored for Pd electrodeposition. 22 However, these works were mostly limited to the study of Pd thin films. This limits the usability of Pd electrodeposition in ILs to the electronic and decorative industry.Controlled synthesis of nanostructures would make Pd electrodeposition in ILs applicable towards heterogeneous catalysis, where catalysts are usually metal nanoparticles. However, controlling size, shape and distribution of metal nanostructures are not straightforward in either aqueous-based solutions or ILs. Although significant progress has been made in aqueous-based solution regarding the synthesis of Pd nanostructures, the same could not be said for ILs. One of the issues is that the ILs behave differently than that of water; therefore, the knowledge could not be directly transferred from aqueous solutions to ILs. Another prominent issue is that each IL has unique chemistry. Despite these disadvantages, ILs hav...

The palladium film deposited on a nickel substrate in 1-butyl-1-methylpyrrolidinium dicyanamide using a constant potential electrodeposition method was shown to be composed of nanoparticles under transmission electron microscopy. The electrodeposition was carried out by applying a potential hold of -2.3 V vs Fc/Fc+ for 16 h. The size distribution of palladium nanoparticles was unimodal and narrow with an average size of 6.3 ± 1.6 nm. The Pd nanoparticles were polycrystalline with (111) plane being the most prevalent. The implications of this include the having to reconsider the properties of electrodeposited Pd thin films from ionic liquids and opening further applications of electrodeposition of Pd to include nanoparticle synthesis.