Cobalt electrodeposition onto stainless steel 304 from ammoniacal solutions

Abstract

In this work we studied the cobalt electrodeposition onto a stainless steel 304 electrode from an aqueous solution containing 10-1 M of CoSO4 + 1M (NH4)2SO4 at natural pH of 4.5. Black cobalt deposits were obtained under our experimental conditions. The average diffusion coefficient calculated was 9.8X10-6 cm2s -1 while the δG for the formation of stable nucleus was 1.013X10-20 J/nuclei. The critical clusteŕs size calculated was 0 which suggested that each active site is a critical nucleus on the SSE-304 surface. The Scanning Electron Microscopy images showed the formation of non-uniform cobalt particles.