Mechanisms of Electroless Metal Plating: I. Application of the Mixed Potential Theory

The Wagner and Traud (1) theory of mixed potentials postulates that the rate of a faradaic process is independent of other faradaic processes occurring simultaneously at the electrode and, thus, depends only on the electrode potential. Hence, the polarization curves for independent anodic and cathodic processes may be added to predict the overall rates and potentials which exist when more than one reaction occurs simultaneously at an electrode. More recently, it has been suggested (2) that the same concept applies to electroless plating processes and that plating mechanisms can be predicted from the polarization curves for the partial processes. This has given rise to some controversy (3, 4) as the two partial reactions in electroless plating processes are not entirely independent of each other. © 1983, The Electrochemical Society, Inc. All rights reserved.