Electrochemical deposition of hemispherical nuclei under diffusion control. Some theoretical considerations

Abstract

The electrical current caused by mass transport to a growing hemispherical nucleus is derived for the case where the electrolyte solution is initially quiescent and contains a large excess of inert electrolyte. Both diffusion and radial convection are included. It is demonstrated that the convective term can be neglected in most cases of nucleus growth and that for these cases a simplified solution will suffice.

In the second half of the paper the result for the growth of a single, isolated nucleus is generalized to the case of a statistically large sample of continuously increasing numbers of nuclei, N(t). A simple method of analysing experimental data is suggested which can yield N(t) directly.