Microstructural investigation of nickel deposits obtained by pulsed current

Abstract

Electrodeposited nickel coatings are applied in functional applications to modify or improve corrosion resistance, hardness, wear, magnetic, and other properties. In this work, Nickel deposits were produced by simple pulse electrodeposition using a free-additive Watts bath. It has been shown that pulse current deposition is able to produce coatings with excellent properties in morphology, particle distribution, structure, grain size, hardness and wear resistance. Pulsed techniques present a larger number of variables, so we propose to optimize the parameters which define the pulsed current to obtain deposits with improved properties. The optimization of the conditions of deposition was established and the influence of pulse parameters, namely, pulse on-time, off-time and average current density, on the grain size, surface morphology and crystal orientation was determined. The morphology of the coatings was characterized by observations in scanning electronic microscopy (SEM). X-ray diffraction in symmetric mode was also used to evaluate the structure and principal crystallographic orientations of the deposits. The study showed that pulse current results in better properties of deposits and significantly refined the crystal grain.