Development of Ni–Cu Materials Library by Using Combinatorial Pulsed Electrodeposition

Abstract

Combinatorial materials fabrication and high-throughput characterization methods offer a new experimental paradigm to accelerate the enhancement of known and the discovery of new materials in materials science and engineering. In this study, the composition spread library of binary Ni–Cu alloy system is synthesized combinatorially onto a copper substrate using pulsed electrodeposition (PED) from a single sulfate bath with a complexing agent trisodium citrate in a modified Hull cell. Different current densities are expected on the tilted cathode which varied the composition along lateral direction and generated Ni–Cu binary spread. Crystallographic structure as well as atomic concentration of the constituent elements of the deposited binary Ni–Cu alloy film along the lateral direction is determined as a function of fabrication parameters. The presented results indicate the successful development of Ni–Cu binary spread (10–90 at.%) via PED.