Exploratory study of copper particles electrodeposition on nickel by induction heating

Abstract

Copper and the oxides which are spontaneously formed on its surface have numerous interesting properties that can be exploited in fields such as catalysis, gas sensing, antimicrobial activity, etc. Furthermore, metallic nanoparticles (NPs) have many size-dependent properties such as a large surface area to volume ratio that can enhance these copper/copper oxides properties. This work aims to highlight the beneficial effect of induction heating versus conventional heating on the electrodeposition of copper particles on nickel substrates. We showed that in temperature-equivalent conditions, conventional heating leads to a low coverage of the Ni electrode with weakly adherent copper microparticles (these particles having a very large size distribution and uncontrolled morphology) while induction heating leads to a high coverage of the surface with copper nanoparticles (these particles having a sharp unimodal size repartition and a truncated octahedron/octahedron shape exposing mainly (111) facets). Furthermore, while no crystalline copper oxide could be highlighted for copper nanoparticles electrodeposited at room temperature, induction heating leads to the formation of a crystalline Cu2O shell that could have interesting catalytic properties, among others.