Growth of self-assembled copper nanostructure on conducting polymer by electrodeposition

In the present work, self-assembled nanostructures of copper are grown by electrodeposition on a thin conducting polymer (polypyrrole) film electropolymerized on a gold electrode. The shapes, sizes and the densities of the nanostructures are found to depend on the thickness of the polypyrrole thin film, which provides an easy means to control the morphology of these nanostructures. In particular, for the same applied potential on the gold electrode, smaller nanocrystals with a higher density are observed on thinner polymer films while bigger nanocrystals at a lower density are found on thicker films.