Resistance of Cell in Fractal Growth in Electrodeposition

1.1 Introduction

Fractal pattern formation (Yaroslavsky, 2007) is one of the important phenomena in nature. One of the commonly used techniques for the growth of metallic dendritic patterns showing fractal character is elctrodeposition (Atchison, Burford, & Hibbert, 1994). Patterns developed as a result of Diffusion Limited Aggregation (DLA) (Cronemberger & Sampaio, 2006; Chakrabarty et al., 2009; Hibbert, 1991) are often found in various processes in physical sciences, chemical sciences, and engineering.

The electro-depositions obtained in circular cell (Vicsek, 1992; Costa, Sagues, & Vilarrasa, 1991) geometry under constant cell operating voltage conditions indicate that the growth at the outer part of the depositions is relatively denser (Shaikh, Khan, Pathan, Patil, & Behere, 2009). The increased branching at the later stage of development of the growth was attributed to the increased electric field (Argoul, Huth, Merzeau, Arnrodo, & Swinney, 1993; Fleury, Chazalviel, Rosso, & Sapoval, 1990) due to the reduction in gap between cathode and anode. This change is gradual and continues with the growth and with the evolution of the growth the electrical properties of the cell undergo changes. This motivated us to measure the dynamic electrical resistance of the electrodeposition cell as this will help better understanding of the mechanism.