INVESTIGATION OF THE INTERACTION OF PRECIPITATING NICKEL(II) HYDROXIDE WITH SILICA SURFACES BY RUTHERFORD BACK SCATTERING (RBS)

Rutherford Back Scattering (RBS) has been applied in combination with Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) to investigate the interaction of precipitatig nickelhydroxide with quartz surfaces. It was found that hydroxylation of the quartz surface is a prerequisite for the formation of a weakly adhering nickelhydrosilicate layer. On a fire‐polished quartz surface no reaction with the quartz took place, a very weakly adhering nickelhydroxide layer being deposited. When the nickelhydroxide was precipitated in the presence of finely divided suspended silica, the precipitating nickel ions appeared to react preferently with the small reactive silica particals. It is shown that these results agree well with literature data. RBS together with SEM appeared to be a powerfull technique for studying these surface reactions. Copyright © 1979 Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim