**c.** Bath Agitation

Agitation of the plating solution is important in determining particle incorporation. There are various methods of agitation employed include circulation by pumping, purging, of air, ultrasonic agitation, and the plate pumper technique. In general, if the agitation is too slow (laminar flow), the particles in the bath may not disperse completely, except when their density is low. If the agitation is too high (turbulent), particles will not have sufficient time to get attached to the surface, and this results in poor particles incorporation [25].

Increase in the bath agitation in the parallel plate electrode setup has been found to increase the amount of particles co-deposited within the electroplated film for the Ni-Al2O3 and Ni-TiO2 systems. When the agitation is increases, a greater number of particles arrive at the electrode surface and the amount of particle incorporation in the metal film increases. However, if the agitation is too intense, the residence time for the particles at the electrode surface is insufficient and the particles are swept away before they can be incorporated into the growing metal film [25]. The amount of co-deposition has also been observed to decrease in the Cu-SiC and Cu-CrB2 systems with increasing agitation [24].
