Electrochemical annealing and its relevance in metal electroplating: an atomistic view

Comparative STM studies on island equilibrium shapes, shape fluctuations and island coalescence on Au(001) electrodes in chloric and sulfuric acid solutions

“…This was also demonstrated in experimental studies on step fluctuations on Au(1 1 1) [17] and in island decay studies on Au(0 0 1) [55]. As a caveat we should emphasize though that the step line tension is a defect formation energy.…”

“…In addition, in Ref. [55] we showed that island decay is dominated by diffusion limited terrace diffusion. Hence, the finding of a detachment-limited terrace diffusion dominated mass transport during island coalescence is puzzling and seems to be in contradiction with our findings for island decay on Au(0 0 1) in this electrolyte.…”

“…[30] the activation energy for detachment-limited island decay (Ostwald ripening) was identified to be the sum E stick + E ad + E diff with E ad the adatom formation energy from a kink site at the island edge to the terrace and E diff the diffusion barrier on the terrace. Since for Au(0 0 1) in 100 mM HClO 4 + 1 mM HCl E ad + E diff ∼ 0.9 eV [55], E stick would have to be negative. In addition, in Ref.…”

A novel approach to measure the step line tension and the step dipole moment on vicinal Au(001) electrodes

“…Dipole moments per step atom were extracted from the relation between the step density and the magnitude of the shift in the pzc and are of the order of 0.01 eÅ . Coarsening phenomena and diffusion processes at the solid/electrolyte interface were studied experimentally on two-dimensional Ostwald ripening and on equilibrium step fluctuations [13][14][15][16][17]. In both cases, the diffusion rates depend significantly on the electrode potential.…”

Cu nanofilm formation by electrochemical atomic layer deposition (ALD) in the presence of chloride ions

“…EA describes a process where the surface of a metal is smoothed at the atomic scale by a combination of the adsorption of a surfactant species and adjustment of the electrochemical potential to near that required to oxidize the metal [3,4]. This combination appears to promote surface mobility, and thus ordering.…”