Electrochemical Nucleation and Growth for fabrication of catalyst nanoparticle for hydrogen evolution reaction

Electrodeposition is regarded as one of the promising approaches to fabricate catalysts for green energy technologies, such as hydrogen production and CO₂ reduction. The better one perceives the underlying relationships between the catalyst morphology and the contributing parameters to it, the more likely it would be to know how to fabricate given catalysts, based on the need!

It is already known that by increasing the overpotential, nanoparticles of higher island density, N_p, deposit on the substrate; the nucleation density follows an exponential relationship with the actual deposition overpotential. Indeed, when ln N_p is plotted versus overpotential, the points will form a line with a given slope. That is a good start! What about the substrate characteristics, such as surface energy?! In this master project, an answer to this question is sought. It is aimed to see how surface characteristics can change the position of the lines, which can be regarded as the substrate’s platability. Using galvanostatic polarization and SEM observations, nucleation and growth kinetics on different substrates are compared and analysed.

As a master student of KU Leuven, you will work at imec and use its facilities. For further information, refer to the papers below:

1. The effect of cupric ion concentration on the nucleation and growth of copper on RuTa seeded substrates, M. Nagar, A. Radisic, K. Strubbe, P. M. Vereecken, Electrochimia Acta, 92 477-483 (2013).
2. Nucleation and growth of copper on Ru-based substrates: I. The effect of the inorganic components, M. Nagar, P. M. Vereecken, K. Strubbe, A. Radisic, ECS Transactions, 41 (35) 75-82 (2012).
3. Nanoscale Nucleation and Growth of Electrodeposited Lithium Metal, A. Pei, G. Zheng, F. Shi, Y. Li, Y. Cui, Nanoletters 17 (2) 1132-1139 (2017).