SnO additive for dendritic growth suppression of electrolytic zinc

Abstract This paper reports that SnO additive in an alkaline solution can effectively suppress the dendritic growth of electrolytic Zn. There was a remarkable change in the voltammetric behavior with increasing SnO additive content, which indicated its strong effect on the redox reaction of Zn. A higher additive content resulted in greater suppression of the dendritic growth of electrolytic Zn. From the compositional analysis of the electrodeposit, it was confirmed that Sn was co-deposited with Zn in amounts up to around 1 at.%. This implied that the incorporated Sn hindered the typical dendritic growth of electrolytic Zn. However, excess SnO resulted in rough and crumbling electrodeposits because of the formation of relatively large amount of a pure Sn phase.