Nickel Dendritic Pattern in Electrodeposition at Different Temperatures

Abstract

Diffusion controlled pattern formation is one of the important phenomena in nature. The dendritic crystal growth, viscous fingering, electrodeposition, and diffusion-limited aggregation (DLA) have received the most of the attention. One of the fundamental ways in which the dendritic pattern that is fractal is grown is electrodeposition. DLA and patterns developed as a result of DLA are often found in various processes in physical sciences, chemical sciences, and engineering. The dendritic pattern in the Electrodeposition of nickel from nickel chloride solution is presented at different cell operating temperatures. Dendritic patterns obtained under different cell operating conditions and their characterization are presented and analyzed. DLA-like conditions govern dendritic metal deposition using electrodeposition from electrolyte solutions. It was observed that nickel dendrites are not developed under electrodeposition using circular cell geometry, because the DLA-like conditions required for the growth of branching patterns cannot be realized at room temperature for nickel chloride solution. Therefore, the study of the electrodeposition of nickel from nickel chloride solution at different temperatures is presented in this paper. The fractal dimension of the pattern obtained in different growth is also given. The dendritic patterns developed show self-similarity and scale invariance, details are presented and findings discussed. To study the nature of material deposited in DLA-like conditions scanning electron microscopy (SEM) of images were analyzed. To study the particle size, X-ray diffraction (XRD) of material deposited is also analyzed and presented in the same work.