Electroplating, one of the most critical procedures in science, is a process in which one metal is plated onto another using electrolysis. As a result, the electrical contacts in integrated circuits occur with nanometric precision.
However, for decades, various scientists have been trying to hypothesize the early stages of electrodeposition, including the formation of the single nucleus, but it remains a formidable challenge.
Now, for the 1st time, scientists from the University of Bristol’s Schools of Chemistry, Physics, and the Bristol Centre for Functional Nanomaterials CDT have captured the birth of a single nucleus. They have developed an entirely new approach that monitors the process leading to the birth of a nucleus in real time.
David Fermin, Professor of Electrochemistry, said, “This is a very exciting development which pushes the boundaries of spatiotemporal resolution of electrochemical processes.”
“There are highly sophisticated methods which allow monitoring phenomena at the atomic scale, but compromising the dynamics of the process, while other methods can follow very fast dynamics but we can’t ‘see’ where they happen in space.”
Here, scientists used Lateral Molecular Force Microscopy to observe the formation of a metallic nucleus. For this, they even pursued the perturbations in the viscoelastic properties of hydration layers with nanometer resolution.
This microscope works by detecting small changes in the oscillation of a very sharp tip due to sheer forces exerted by water layers.
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According to Professor Fermin, this is just an example of the new science. “Our unique microscope can unveil in fields such as interfacial electrochemistry and catalysis for energy,” he said. “The most fascinating is, we can detect very subtle changes in the structure of water in real-time.”
The study shows that the detection of very small local perturbations of the water structure near the surface allows the complex dynamics of the early stages of electrodeposition to be tracked.
Journal Reference
- Harniman, R. L., Plana, D., Carter, G. H., Bradley, K. A., Miles, M. J., & Fermín, D. J. (2017). Real-time tracking of metal nucleation via local perturbation of hydration layers. Nature Communications, 8(1), 971. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-01087-1
