Study of the Electrodeposition of Silver Nanoparticles on Glassy Carbon by Galvanostatic Control

Abstract

In this work, nucleation and growth processes under galvanostatic control are studied, taking silver as a reference system. The methodology proposed allows electrodeposition to be carried out in areas of 5 mm2 and with a reagent volume of 10 μL, using a capillary droplet cell built for this purpose. Silver nuclei were generated by transfer of the same charge but varying the intensity of the applied current density and the pulse duration. It was found that pulses with a current density of 1.70 mA/cm2 generate a high density of particles with low variability. The comparison between the galvanostatic and potentiostatic methods shows that the galvanostatic control generates smaller particles with high density. In contrast, the potentiostatic pulse result in a better spatial distribution of the particles on the electrode area limited by the droplet.