ADDITIVES IN THE ELECTROCRYSTALLIZATION PROCESS

Adding organics to a plating bath is the most frequently used method to achieve a special property of a metal layer. Several methods are in use for in situ control of their activity: cyclic voltammetry and laser light scattering are described in this paper. The concept of hard and soft acids and bases is discussed in order to understand competitive adsorption. More molecular information is obtained by spectroscopic methods. As an example, some recent results in monitoring silver deposition by surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy are described.