A method of fabricating and using a zinc negative electrode and systems thereof are described. A zinc electroplated electrode including a layer of zinc metal bonded to a surface of an electrically conductive current collector is fabricated by an electroplating process using a zinc electroplating system. The zinc electroplating system includes: a zinc metal anode, a cathode including the current collector for plating zinc thereon, and an electrolyte bath comprising zinc ions. The electroplating process bonds the zinc metal to the surface of the current collector to create the electroplated zinc electrode. The electroplated zinc electrode is used as a negative electrode in a zinc metal cell. The zinc metal cell may be a primary cell or a secondary cell.

A nano-twinned crystal film and a method thereof are disclosed. The method of fabricating a nano-twinned crystal film includes utilizing an electrolyte solution including copper salt, acid, and a water or alcohol-soluble organic additive, and performing electrodeposition, under conditions of a current density of 20˜100 mA/cm.sup.2, a voltage of 0.2˜1.0V, and a cathode-anode distance of 10˜300 mm, to form the nano-twinned crystal film on a surface at the cathode. The nano-twinned crystal film formed by the method includes a plurality of nano-twinned copper grains and a region of random crystal phases between some of adjacent nano-twinned copper grains, wherein at least some of the nano-twinned copper grains have a pillar cap configuration with a wide top and a narrow bottom.

Provided is a surface-treated copper foil in which in order to avoid failures of electronic parts by corrosion, a high bond strength between an electrolytic copper foil and a resin base material can be maintained even when the surface-treated copper foil is exposed to corrosive gases and microparticles, and a method for manufacturing the same. The surface-treated copper foil of the present invention comprises an electrolytic copper foil, a roughened layer covering at least one surface side of the electrolytic copper foil, and a rust preventive layer further covering the roughened layer, wherein the rust preventive layer is at least one surface of the surface-treated copper foil; the rust preventive layer comprises at least a nickel layer; and the thickness of the nickel layer is 0.8 to 4.4 g/m.sup.2 in terms of mass per unit area of nickel; and the noncontact roughness Spd of the rust preventive layer is 1.4 to 2.6 peaks/μm.sup.2 and the surface roughness RzJIS of the rust preventive layer is 1.0 to 2.5 μm. The method for manufacturing the surface-treated copper foil forms the roughened layer having higher roughnesses than the noncontact roughness Spd and surface roughness RzJIS on one surface of the electrolytic copper foil, and thereafter forming the rust preventive layer meeting the predetermined condition.

Provided is an electrodeposited copper foil having high smoothness and exhibiting high flexibility (particularly, high flexibility after annealing at 180° C. for 1 hour) suitable for a flexible substrate. This electrodeposited copper foil has an Rz of 0.1 to 2.0 μm on at least one surface. In cross-sectional analysis by EBSD, a proportion of an area occupied by copper crystal grains satisfying the following conditions relative to an area of an observation field occupied by copper crystal grains is 63% or more. The conditions are as follows: i) (101) orientation; ii) an aspect ratio of 0.500 or less; iii) | sin θ| of 0.001 to 0.707, where θ)(°) is an angle between a normal line of an electrode surface of the electrodeposited copper foil and a major axis of the copper crystal grain; and iv) when the crystal is elliptically approximated, a length of a minor axis of 0.38 μm or smaller.

This tin or tin alloy electroplating solution according to one aspect contains a soluble salt (A) including at least a stannous salt, one or more compounds (B) selected from the group consisting of an organic acid, an inorganic acid, and a salt thereof, a surfactant (C) that is a polyoxyethylene polycyclic phenyl ether sulfuric acid ester salt represented by the following General Formula (1), and a leveling agent (D).

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In General Formula (1), m is an integer of 1 to 3, n is an integer of 10 to 30, and X is a cation.

An aqueous acidic copper electroplating bath that produces a satin deposit includes a source of copper ions, an acid, a satin additive, and optionally one or more acidic copper electroplating bath additive(s), wherein the satin additive includes a block copolymer with the structure of RO(EO)m(PO)nH.

Stacked magnetic cores that can achieve high density with a small footprint, as well as methods of fabricating and using the same, are provided. A stacked magnetic core can be fabricated by depositing nanomagnetic films with control in composition and nanostructure via a continuous electroplating process. The magnetic films are interspersed with thin adhesive films (that can be insulating) in an automated roll-to-roll process. That is, the magnetic films and adhesive films are disposed in an alternating fashion. The adhesive films can keep the magnetic films completely electrically isolated from each other, while also adhering adjacent magnetic films to each other.

Metastable alloys have recently emerged as high-performance catalysts, extending the toolbox of binary alloy materials that can be utilized to mediate electrocatalytic reactions. In particular, nanostructured metastable ordered intermetallic compounds are particularly challenging to synthesize. Here the present invention is directed to a method for synthesizing sub-15 nm metastable ordered intermetallic Pd31Bi12 nanoparticles at room temperature, in a single step, by pulsed electrochemical deposition onto high surface area carbon supports. The resulting Pd31Bi12 nanoparticles displays a 7× enhancement of the mass activity relative to Pt/C and a 4× enhancement relative to Pd/C for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). The high performance of Pd31Bi12 nanoparticles is demonstrated to arise from reduced oxygen binding caused by alloying of Pd with Bi. The isolation of Pd-sites from each other facilitate methanol tolerant ORR behavior.

The invention relates to a corrosion protection layer system for metal surfaces, said layer system comprising as the two top most layers: a) a discontinuous nickel-phosphorus layer and b) a chromium layer plated from a trivalent chromium electrolyte solution, as well as to a method of producing such a layer system. The inventive layer system is capable to combine the good corrosion resistance of the nickel-phosphorus layer against sodium chloride with the protective power of the chromium layer from the trivalent plating process against magnesium and calcium salts, especially without the need for any post-treatment.

The present invention provides an electrogalvanized steel sheet and a method manufacturing same, the electrogalvanized steel sheet having superb whiteness, and an attractive exterior surface due to reduction in surface scale.