Abstract
Pulsed current (PC) electrodeposition has become an essential tool for producing coatings in a wide range of industries. The pulsed current can have a significant influence on the composition, morphology and properties of electrodeposited coatings and this is particularly true when plating an alloy. In this study, the mechanism for the development of Sn-Cu alloy coatings produced by PC electrodeposition was investigated. Sn-Cu alloy coatings produced by PC electrodeposition were essentially composed of a dual layer of Sn-Cu electrodeposits and Cu6Sn5 inter metallic compounds (IMCs). In addition, it was observed that pulsed Sn-Cu electrodeposits exhibited an increased Cu content. Experiments were carefully designed to elucidate the mechanism for this important finding and based on their results a theory is proposed which explains the increased Cu content in terms of a metal displacement reaction occurring during the ‘relaxation’ time of PC electrodeposition.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 120-127 |
| Number of pages | 8 |
| Journal | Materials Letters |
| Volume | 217 |
| Early online date | 31 Jan 2018 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 15 Apr 2018 |
Bibliographical note
NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Materials Letters. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Materials Letters, [(Vol 217,p120-123, (2018)] DOI: 10.1016/j.matlet.2018.01.094© 2018, Elsevier. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Keywords
- Pulsed current techniques
- Sn-Cu coatings
- electrodeposition
- mechanism