Deposition of selenium thin layers on gold surfaces from sulphuric acid media: Studies using electrochemical quartz crystal microbalance, cyclic voltammetry and AFM

In this paper we report here new considerations about the relationship between the mass and charge variations (m/z relationship) in underpotential deposition (UPD), bulk deposition and also in the H2Se formation reaction. Nanogravimetric experiments were able to show the adsorption of H2SeO3 on the AuO surface prior to the voltammetric sweep and that, after the AuO reduction, 0.40 monolayer of H2SeO3 remains adsorbed on the newly reduced Au surface, which was enough to gives rise to the UPD layer. The UPD results indicate that the maximum coverage with Seads on polycrystalline gold surface corresponds to approximately 0.40 monolayer, in good agreement with charge density results. The cyclic voltammetry experiments demonstrated that the amount of bulk Se obtained during the potential scan to approximately 2 Se monolayers, which was further confirmed by electrochemical quartz crystal microbalance (EQCM) measurements that pointed out a mass variation corresponding of 3 monolayers of Se. In addition, the Se thin films were obtained by chronoamperometric experiments, where the Au electrode was polarized at +0.10 V during different times in 1.0 M H2SO4 + 1.0 mM SeO2. The topologic aspects of the electrodeposits were observed in Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) measurements. Finally, in highly negative potential polarizations, the H2Se formation was analyzed by voltammetric and nanogravimetric measurements. These finding brings a new light on the selenium electrodeposition and point up to a proposed electrochemical model for molecule controlled surface engineering.