Correlations between the kinetics of zinc electrodeposition and the fractal properties of the deposits

Abstract

We present an experimental study of the electrodeposition of zinc in a thin-layer, three-electrode, electrochemical cell. We show that as the steady-state current-potential behavior approaches mass-transfer-limited kinetics, the fractal dimension of the morphology of the deposit converges to the diffusion-limited-aggregation value of frac53;. We also show that the kinetic parameters that are obtained in the thin-layer electrochemical cell, which was constructed to induce two-dimensional growth that can be conveniently analyzed and compared with computer simulations, agree with those obtained in the traditional three-dimensional configuration.