Linear sweep and staircase voltammetries for reversible deposition of metal ions on the same metal and on foreign substrates

Commercial digital instruments implement staircase voltammetry (SV) instead of linear sweep voltammetry (LV). For a reversible surface reaction the peak height in SV is markedly lower than that in LV. Simple expressions which describe accurately the peak potential and the peak current in SV for reversible deposition of metal ions on the same metal and on foreign substrates have been derived and the adequate experimental conditions have been defined. For the modeling of the electrodeposition on a foreign substrate, the metal ion adsorption has been considered as the initial step and the activity 1 has been attributed to the complete metal monolayer.