Kinetics of nickel electroplating from methanesulfonate electrolyte

The overpotential of nickel ion electroreduction on the nickel and mercury electrodes is shown to increase in the following sequence of anions: ClO₄⁻,CH₃SO₃⁻, SO₄²⁻. On the nickel electrode, the overpotential of nickel evolution decreases as the pH^v increases from 1.5 to 4. This is associated with the increase in pH^s as the result of a parallel reaction of hydrogen evolution. It is shown that in contrast to mercury, the Tafel plots of the nickel electrode demonstrate a bend corresponding to the change in their slope from −0.044 to −0.132 V. This is accompanied by the lowering down of the reaction order in nickel ions from 2 to 1. A mechanism of nickel ion electroreduction that includes two parallel routes is proposed and substantiated by a model. In the low overpotential range, the predominant process is the electroreduction of nickel hydroxocomplexes, which is characterized by the strong dependence of the reaction rate on the potential and the concentration of electroactive species. For high overpotentials, the predominant process is the direct discharge of nickel aquacomplexes the rate of which depends weaker on the potential and the concentration of electroactive species.