(Invited) Molecular-Level Analysis of Electrodeposition Processes Using Theoretical Calculations and Surface Enhanced Raman Microscopy

Abstract

Electrodeposition process has been widely applied to various areas to form functional thin films and nanostructures. In order to understand the deposition process from molecular level to achieve further precise control, we employ theoretical calculation and surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS). For the theoretical calculation to study the deposition reaction mechanism, molecular orbital and density functional theory calculations were applied to investigate the behaver of the species at the electrode surface, and various factors such as solvation effect and catalytic activity of the surface were also analysed. In addition, SERS equipped with confocal microscopy was used for in situ analysis of the reaction processes at the electrode surface. For this we applied plasmon sensors [1] to achieve very high sensitivity analysis. Furthermore multi-confocal type SERS microscopy was employed for mapping and imaging analysis. By using these techniques, various systems have been analysed and modelling of their reaction processes has been carried out. This work was financially supported in part by “Development of Systems and Technology for Advanced Measurement and Analysis,” Japan Science and Technology Agency, and Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research, MEXT, Japan. [1] M. Yanagisawa, M. Saito, M. Kunimoto, T. Homma, Appl. Phys. Express, 9 , 122002 (2016).