Kinetics of electrochemical formation silver-tungsten coatings from the ammonium sulfate electrolyte

The mechanism of electrochemical deposition of silver-tungsten thin films from the ammonium sulfate solution has been studied. The dependencies of the coating formation parameters (exchange current, transfer coefficient and nucleation parameters) on a sodium tungstate concentration in the electrolyte and deposition conditions have been defined. It was shown that the introduction of tungsten reduces the crystallization overvoltage and critical nucleus radius as well as reduces the average crystal grain size in the coating with the increase in the rate of nucleation. Coating structure has been researched, the elemental analysis has been done and grain size distribution density in a silver-tungsten coating has been calculated using energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy.