Application of an electroless copper coating in alkaline bath to preparation of the metal hydride electrode

금속 수소화물 전극제조에 있어서 알카리 무전해 구리 도금법의 응용

Electroless copper plating method using an alkaline bath have been employed in copper coating of the (LM)Ni4.5Co0.1MnO.2A10.2 hydrogen storage alloy powders for electrode preparation. The plating were conducted without any pretreatment of alloy powders. For the preparation of the electrodes, about 0.12g of the copper coated alloy powder (copper to alloy ratio 1/3 by weight) was compacted with pressure of 6 tons/cm2 at room temperature. The disk-type compacts had a diameter of 10mm and thickness of about 0.24mm. The electrode characteristics were examined through SEM observations and electrochemical measurements in a half cell. The electrochemical measurement showed that the maximum discharge capacity of the electrodes prepared by using alkaline bath were 245mAh per gram of coated alloy (327mAh per gram of alloy) and appeared a considerable degradation with increasing number of cycles. The decrease of the discharge capacity after 100 cycles was about 30% It can be suggested that, with a slight of improvement, this electroless copper plating method could be applied to the preparation of the rare earth-nickel based alloy electrode.