Response to “Comment on ‘Microstructure and Properties of Electrochemically Deposited Ni-Fe/Si3N4 Nanocomposites from a DMF Bath’[J. Electrochem. Soc., 162, D87 (2015)

Abstract

The paper was focused on electrodeposition of Ni-Fe/Si3N4 nanocomposites from a DMF bath and study of microstructure and some of its physical properties. The comments of Bakonyi in context of resistivity that it is unphysical is not agreeable because the authors (Tripathi et al.) never claimed the values as absolute rather it has been already written as apparent values, which are relative only. We agree that the bulk value of the resistivity of a metal refers to that of a well-annealed, high purity state and defect free. Attention is drawn to the fact that the quoted 1 Ni specimens after annealing turned microcrystalline for which they (Laubitz et al.) measured the room temperature resistivity while in our case the resistivity values are reported for nanocrystalline deposits. Further, the grain boundary contribution of electrical resistivity may be non-negligible and the resistivity should be higher than the bulk. However, the observed lower values of resistivity are not unlikely in case of nanocrystalline deposits unlike 2–5 and it is most probable due to possible hopping mechanism which may be applicable for the size of crystallites observed in our case. The comments of the reviewer on our earlier publication 6 are based on conjecture because in 1989 whatever TEM was available, almost defect free deposits were reported with best resolution and with possible higher magnification, which the reviewer considered as an inference. The present results obtained on advanced model of TEM again arrive at the same conclusion. It is agreed that embedding the non-metallic Si3N4 particles in the metallic matrix causes an increase of the resistivity of the nanocomposite formed, and the same was observed by the authors. We (Tripathi et al.) measured the apparent electrical resistivity of nano-Ni of the order of 10 –9 cm while that for the Ni-Fe/Si3N4 nanocomposites it has the order of 10 –8 cm. It is to be noted that the nanocompos