Cobalt electrodeposition onto polycrystalline gold from ammoniacal solutions

Abstract

In the present work, the cobalt electrodeposition onto polycrystalline gold electrodes from aqueous solutions containing 0.01M CoSO4 + 1 M (NH4)2SO4 at pH=7 was analyzed. Linear voltammetry results suggested a change in the kinetic of the cobalt electrodeposition. In all cases, the nucleation rate (A), the number of active nucleation sites (N 0) and the saturation number of nuclei (N s ) values were potential dependent. The calculated Gibbs free energy (ΔG) for this system was 1.88×10-20 J nuclei -1 and the transfer coefficient for the Hydrogen Electroreduction Reaction (HER) was 0.47. © 2013 Versita Warsaw and Springer-Verlag Wien.