Boric acid assisted electrosynthesis of hierarchical three-dimensional cobalt dendrites and microspheres

The use of boric acid as the structure-directing agent and supporting electrolyte is shown to lead to a simple and robust strategy of obtaining hierarchical three dimensional cobalt dendrites, flower-like crystals and microspheres on stainless steel (SS) surfaces at room temperature. The phase and morphology of the dendrites are studied using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Energy Dispersive X-ray analysis (EDAX). The pre-dominant occurrence of cobalt(111) plane is noticed from XRD data while the magnetization studies using Vibrating Sample Magnetometer (VSM) provides a high coercivity value of ∼574.6 Oe for cobalt dendrimers. The mechanism of formation of dendrimers is discussed using the classical Diffusion-Limited Aggregation (DLA) model.