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An investigation of silver electrodeposition from ionic liquids: influence of atmospheric water uptake on the silver electrodeposition mechanism and film morphology

journal contribution
posted on 2011-02-28, 00:00 authored by Andrew Basile, A I Bhatt, A P O'Mullane, S K Bhargava
The electrodeposition of silver from two ionic liquids, 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate ([BMIm][BF4]) and N-butyl-N-methyl-pyrrolidinium bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide ([C 4mPyr][TFSI]), and an aqueous KNO3 solution on a glassy carbon electrode was undertaken. It was found by cyclic voltammetry that the electrodeposition of silver proceeds through nucleation-growth kinetics. Analysis of chronoamperometric data indicated that the nucleation-growth mechanism is instantaneous at all potentials in the case of [BMIm][BF 4] and [C4mPyr][TFSI], and instantaneous at low overpotentials tending to progressive at high overpotentials for KNO 3. Significantly, under ambient conditions, the silver electrodeposition mechanism changes to progressive nucleation and growth in [C4mPyr][TFSI], which is attributed to the uptake of atmospheric water in the IL. It was found that these differences in the growth mechanism impact significantly on the morphology of the resultant electrodeposit which is characterised ex situ by scanning electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction.

History

Journal

Electrochimica acta

Volume

56

Issue

7

Pagination

2895 - 2905

Publisher

Elsevier

Location

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

ISSN

0013-4686

Language

eng

Publication classification

C1.1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

Copyright notice

2011, Elsevier