Comparative studies of morphological and microstructural properties of electrodeposited nanocrsytalline two-phase co-cu thin films prepared at low and high electrolyte temperatures

Abstract

In this work, we have studied the effect of the electrolyte temperature on the compositional, structural, and morphological properties of the Co-Cu thin films grown onto ITO coated glass substrates by galvanostatic electrodeposition. The galvanostatic potential-time transients were employed to study the deposition growth process of the films. The compositional analysis which was made using an energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) indicated that the Cu composition in the films enhances with increasing electrolyte temperature. From the X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis, all of the Co-Cu films were found to consist of hexagonal close-packed (HCP) Co and face-centered cubic (FCC) Cu phase structures regardless of electrolyte temperature. The peak intensities were also changed with electrolyte temperature. It was observed that an enhancement in the electrolyte temperature gives rise to an increase in the average crystallite size of both Cu and Co particles. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) analysis revealed that temperature of the electrolyte significantly affects the surface morphology of the films. Here, several surface roughness parameters such as root mean square (RMS) roughness, average roughness, maximum peak height, and maximum valley depth were also presented as a function of the electrolyte temperature.