NONISOTHERMAL SIMULATION OF ELECTRODEPOSITION

Abstract

The simulation of electrochemical deposition is developed by using a non-isothermal model.
The model consists of two parts; the first is a continuum part that simulates the transport of
heat and mass and the voltage distributions, and the second is a stochastic noncontinuum part
that simulates the bulk diffusion, surface diffusion, and adsorption of the particles. The finite
element method is used to solve the differential-algebraic governing equations of the
continuum part whereas the Kinetic Monte Carlo method is used to simulate the particle
actions in the non-continuum part. The model is applied to the electrodeposition of Zn in
ZnSO4 additive-free electrolyte. A comparison is made between the experimental and the
simulated results including the surface morphology and the temperature distributions. The
results indicated that the simulation model is very promising to be used for such a complicated
process.