Size-selective electrodeposition of mesoscale metal particles in the uncoupled limit

In principle, metal particles can be electrodeposited on electrode surfaces under conditions where individual metal particles grow independently of neighboring particles on the electrode surface, and the growth rate for every particle on the surface is the same. In this "uncoupled limit", extremely narrow particle size distributions will be attainable. We describe the conditions of nucleation density and electrodeposition duration and rate for which this uncoupled growth regime can be obtained. When these growth conditions are implemented to grow silver and gold mesoscale particles on graphite electrode surfaces, narrow (RSDdia < 10%) particle size distributions are obtained for particles with mean diameters in the range from 50 nm to 2.0 mu m.