EXAFS investigations of cobalt electrodeposition

X-ray absorption fine structure spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy were used to study the atomic short range order structure, surface morphology and thickness of cobalt films electrodeposited from CoCl2 solutions on gold-coated Kapton. While the morphology on the electrodeposits strongly depends on the deposition time and thereby on the film thickness, the short range order structure deduced from the X-ray spectroscopic experiments suggests that pure metal films were formed, however with a slight relaxation of the Co-Co bond distances with increasing thickness, which may open new routes for the preparation of nanostructured Co-materials.