The growth of nickel nanoparticles on conductive polymer composite electrodes

Uniformly sized and dispersed nickel core-shell nanoparticles on polypyrrole have been grown by electrodeposition. Two principal types of Ni particle morphologies were observed: small Ni nanocrystallites ranging in diameter from 7 to 12 nm, and larger spherical Ni clusters of 100 nm to over a micron in size. The type of Ni nanoparticles deposited depends sensitively on the preparation of the conducting polymer substrate. The optimal deposition conditions for the small Ni nanocrystallites were determined. TEM diffraction and XPS analysis show that these nanoparticles are predominantly NiO.