**1. Introduction**

Advance of new materials is an important issue in different areas of the technological development; however, the challenges are still diverse and important. A necessary aspect of human survival is the use of renewable energies, especially the solar energy. A technology that can convert the solar radiation in electricity directly is the use of solar cells. Different methods for

© 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2018 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

materials synthesis have been widely investigated for solar energy conversion. These methods can be classified into physical and chemical. Electrodeposition is a chemical method that has been used to obtain metallic or semiconducting films on substrates, with the aim of protecting the surface against the oxidation and corrosion, giving a better esthetic appearance, and providing some mechanical and electrical characteristics, different to the base material, to improve its physical properties. Electrodeposition has been considered for solar cell applications for a long time [1], with a considerable potential for the fabrication of a low-cost thin film for solar cells [2]. It is simple, versatile, and economical as compared to physical methods, such as high vacuum processes. Some of its advantages are requiring less capital investment, saving raw material, application on irregular surfaces, and industry scalability potential. It has been used for materials synthesis for perovskite [3], Cu2 ZnSnS4 [4], and CuInx Ga(1-x)Se2 (CIGS) solar cell [5]. It is also used for nanoparticle synthesis for solar collectors [6] and to develop technology in the energy storage [7].

influence of an electric field [8]. A scheme of load distribution as well as a simple electrical model of a three-electrode electrolytic cell is represented in **Figure 1**. Charge distribution in the electrode-electrolyte interface is analogous to charge distribution in a capacitor which is called the electrical double layer. The electric field lines are defined only at the interface, where CWE and CAE are the equivalent capacitances between the WE and AE and the solution, respectively. RSOL is the solution electric resistance. In a three-electrode-electrolytic cell, the electrode-solution interface is principally important in the WE and AE. Other detailed electric models [9] for the electrode-solution interface suggest that the interface is affected by the capacitance of the double layer, the resistance in the charge transfer zone, and the impedance due to adsorption and mass transport, and the parameter of the electrical model, mentioned

Mechanical Perturbations at the Working Electrode to Materials Synthesis by Electrodeposition

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In an electrodeposition process, the charge, which consists of electrons, is considered to be evenly distributed on the WE surface. When M2+ ions are present in the solution, the electrochemical of M2+ + 2e → M is carrier out on the WE. When more than one type of ions must be reduced, the transport mechanism of the ions until the load transfer zone plays an important role. It is assumed that the ratio at which the ions are consumed by the charge transfer reac-

At the beginning of the electrodeposition process, the first nuclei grow on the WE surface. At that time, the solution around the nuclei is depleted of ionic species, and the only factor that influences the ion movement is diffusion [11], through which the depleted zones around the

tion is equal to the ratio at which the ions arrive at the charge transfer zone.

**Figure 1.** A diagram of a simple electrical model of a three-electrode electrolytic cell.

earlier, can be obtained by electrochemical impedance [10].

The electrodeposition method is considered difficult; perhaps because the electrodeposition process is affected by many variables. Some of them are concentration of the solution, solution temperature, pH, working electrode potential, working electrode resistivity, and distance between electrodes. During the electrodeposition process, there are phenomena that affect the film growth, among them, the diffusion layer, the depletion region, and the natural flow by convection. For such reasons, the electrodeposition method is still under investigation to improve the material quality.
