@misc{LaurinavichyuteNizamovMirsky, author = {Laurinavichyute, Veronika K. and Nizamov, Shavkat and Mirsky, Vladimir M.}, title = {Real time tracking of the early stage of electrochemical nucleation}, series = {Electrochimica Acta}, volume = {382}, journal = {Electrochimica Acta}, issn = {0013-4686}, doi = {10.1016/j.electacta.2021.138278}, pages = {8}, abstract = {An analysis of early stage of electrochemical nucleation is crucial in order to understand the mechanism of this process and for electrochemical synthesis of new materials. We show here an application of the wide field surface plasmon microscopy (WF-SPRM) for this purpose. It allows us in-situ monitoring of the growth of nuclei in the range from ~20 till over 1000 nm. The system registers the moment and the place of the formation of each individual nucleus for the total number of the tracked nuclei up to ~10,000 per 1 mm2. The results demonstrate that the integral information obtained from electrochemical measurements can be extracted quantitatively from optical measurements while optical data provide also information on the size of each individual nucleus, individual nucleation time, localization and growth kinetics, and allows one to distinguish the rate limiting stage for each individual nucleus. In this work WF-SPRM was applied for investigation of electrochemical deposition of copper on gold, but this technique can be extended easily to other materials or other nucleation types.}, language = {en} }