Issue 10, 2023

Influence of the crystallographic texture of ITO on the electrodeposition of silver nanoparticles

Abstract

The electrochemical control over nucleation and growth of metal nanoparticles on foreign substrates is an active field of research, where the surface properties of the substrate have a key role in nucleation dynamics. Polycrystalline indium tin oxide (ITO) films are highly desired substrates for many optoelectronic applications, for which the only parameter that is often specified is the sheet resistance. As a result, growth on ITO is highly irreproducible. Here, we show that ITO substrates with same technical specifications (i.e. sheet resistance, light transmittance and roughness) and supplier may still have different crystalline texture, which we find it has a strong impact on the nucleation and growth of silver nanoparticles during electrodeposition. We find that the preferential presence of lower index surfaces leads to few orders of magnitude lower island density, which is strongly dependent on the nucleation pulse potential. By contrast, the island density on ITO with preferential 〈111〉 orientation is barely affected by the nucleation pulse potential. This work highlights the importance of reporting the surface properties of polycrystalline substrates when presenting nucleation studies and metal nanoparticle electrochemical growth.

Graphical abstract: Influence of the crystallographic texture of ITO on the electrodeposition of silver nanoparticles

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
27 Jan 2023
Accepted
09 Feb 2023
First published
23 Feb 2023
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY license

RSC Adv., 2023,13, 6490-6497

Influence of the crystallographic texture of ITO on the electrodeposition of silver nanoparticles

Y. Bleiji, M. Dieperink, I. Schuringa, H. Sun and E. Alarcon-Llado, RSC Adv., 2023, 13, 6490 DOI: 10.1039/D3RA00577A

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications without requesting further permissions from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given.

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