High Rate Copper Electrodeposition in the Presence of Inorganic Salts

Efforts are on increase for finding out the ways to increase electrodeposition rate. This study shows the effect of using different inorganic salts as accelerators for copper electrodeposition. High deposition rate is attributed to enhanced mass transport of copper ions toward the metal surface and lowering the viscosity through the acidic bath using different techniques as potentio-dynamic, rotating cylinder, rotating disk technique. Based on the analysis of the obtained data, the % acceleration for various types of inorganic additives as halides, mono-valent and bi-valent cations increase with increasing additive concentrations and decrease with temperature. Addition of these additives to copper bath exhibits a strong influence on the microstructure of the deposit as shown in the scanning electron microscope analysis. We observe that, in some cases the acceleration behaviour modify the nucleation mechanism and effect on the crystal growth process.