Characterization of Cu–Ni alloy electrodeposition and synthesis of nanoparticles by pulsed sonoelectrochemistry

Binary alloy Cu-Ni nanoparticles were synthesized by sonoelectrochemical technique from aqueous bath in presence of Na-citrate as complexing agent, to allow co-deposition of Cu and Ni. Alloy Pulsed Electro-Deposition (PED) was carried out to study nucleation kinetic and the effects of pH and surfactant on the final product physical and chemical properties, with the aim to determine optimized parameters for subsequent sonoelectrosyntheses of nanoparticles. Role of pH and Na-citrate in the synthesis process was investigated and it was found that i) pH is the main parameter affecting the stability of synthesis solutions, ii) Na-citrate content influences the sonoelectrochemical process efficiency but at the same time iii) the complexing agent is necessary to obtain Cu and Ni co-deposition; iv) produced nanoparticles are made of CuNi alloy with a fcc crystalline structure and v) pH is weakly responsible of increase in mean grain size of produced nanoparticles.