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Silver nanoparticles were electrodeposited from 0.3 M oxalic acid electrolyte on a pure aluminum working electrode under silver ion concentration-limited condition. A silver wire was held in a glass tube containing 1.0 M KCl solution as the counter electrode. Ion exchange between the glass tube and the main electrodeposition bath through a capillary was driven by the overpotentials as high as 10 V supplied by an electrochemical workstation. Due to the reaction between chlorine anion and silver cation to form AgCl solid at the Ag/AgCl electrode, the silver ion concentration-limited condition holds in the electrolyte. It is found that silver grows at the aluminum working electrode to form nanoparticles with an average size of about 52.4 ± 13.6 nm. With the increasing of the deposition time, the silver nanoparticles aggregate into clusters. The silver particle clusters are separated with approximately 112.6 ± 19.7 nm due to the hydrogen bubble-induced self-assembling, which is shown by the confined deposition of silver on a gold coating. The surface roughness of the aluminum substrate leads to the reduced uniformity of silver nanoparticle nucleation and growth.

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Electrohydrodynamic processing including electrospinning and electrospraying is suitable for depositing controllable structures in fiber or film form. In this work, the electrohydrodynamic approach was used to prepare poly(vinylidene fluoride)/polyaniline composite film. Scanning electron microscopic analysis was performed to show the morphology of the film on soft tissue paper. Self-poling of the film was found due to the high voltage application in the electrohydrodynamic process. The addition of polyaniline into PVDF improves the conductivity of the film significantly. Mechanoelectrical response of the film was demonstrated by measuring the open circuit voltage of the specimens under bending. The peak voltage generated is over 1.2 V due to the bending deformation of the film. The film has ultrafast response to the deformation. It is concluded that the film has multiple functions for mechanoelectrical energy conversion, vibration sensing, and structural integrity monitoring applications.