Nucleation Mechanism and Microstructural Analysis of Zn Films on Mo Substrates by Electrodeposition

Abstract

Zinc (Zn) films have been prepared on a molybdenum (Mo) substrate by the electrodeposition method from the electrolyte solutions of zinc chloride (ZnCl 2 ) and potassium chloride (KCl) added by surfactant PEG-6000. The influence of growth conditions on growth kinetics, morphologies and phase constitution of the films were investigated by cyclic voltammetry (CV), chronoamperometry (CA), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). Based on Scharifker-Hills model and microstructural analysis, it is found that the electrodeposition process of Zn films is mainly controlled by the diffusion process of zinc complex ions, and both progressive and instantaneous nucleation mechanisms are revealed and it is dependent on growth conditions such as main salt ZnCl 2 concentration and organic additive.

Review—Electrochemical Phase Formation via a Supercooled Liquid State Stage: Metastable Structures and Intermediate Phases

“…Despite the hypothetical nature of the above concepts put forward more than half a century ago without sufficient experimental verification, they are now accepted as an indisputable scientific fact. In addition, those concepts have received theoretical development both in modern monographs, [21][22][23][24][25] and in recent publications [26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44] on the electrochemical phase formation in metals and alloys.…”