Effect of additives on nickel nanowires electrochemical deposition

The paper presents the effect of additives on nickel nanowires preparation by employing a template approach. The nanostructures were obtained by electrochemical deposition in ion track nanoporous membranes. The main goal was to find a wetting agent which increases the pores filling efficiency. Due to the fact that the polycarbonate nanoporous membranes used as templates are strongly hydrophobic problems appear when filling the nanopores with the aqueous electrochemical baths. We found that polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) added in the bath improves membrane wetting, thus increasing the deposition efficiency up to 80%. Electrochemical polarization and chronoamperometry were employed for identifying and studying the processes which take place in the case of cathodic deposition of nickel nanowires. Scanning electron microscopy was employed for nanostructure morphology characterization.