Magnetic effects in electrochemistry

The effect of imposed magnetic fields onto the electrodeposition of mag- netic (nickel) and non - magnetic (copper) metals was analysed. Also, magnetic properties of electrochemically obtained nanocontacts were examined. An effort to establish a possible correlation between the morphologies of the nanocontacts and the effect of the very large ballistic magnetoresistance (BMR effect) was made. The effect of an imposed magnetic field on the electrodeposition of magnetic and non - magnetic metals The effect of imposed magnetic fields on the electrodeposition of nickel was examined. Nickel deposits obtained without and with, low strength magnetic fields (up to 500 Oe) applied both perpendicularly and parallelly to the electrode surface, were analysed by the SEM technique. Nickel was electrodeposited from a Watt so- lution with the addition of coumarin, at cathodic potentials of - 1000, - 1200 and - 1300 mV/SCE. At cathodic potentials of - 1000 mV/SCE and - 1200 mV/SCE, the obtained nickel morphologies were consistent with the predictions of the magneto- hydrodynamic (MHD) theory. 1 The nickel deposits obtained under parallelly ori- ented magnetic fields had more uniform structures than the nickel deposits ob- tained without and under perpendicularly oriented magnetic fields. The nickel de- posits obtained under perpendicularly oriented magnetic fields were very similar to those obtained without any applied magnetic field. At a cathodic potential of - 1300 mV/SCE, a dramatic difference was ob- served between the nickel morphologies obtained without and under a perpendicu- larly oriented magnetic field (the expected MHD effect was zero !). The nickel de-