Mechanism of electrochemical reduction of hydrogen peroxide on copper in acidic sulfate solutions.

Hydrogen peroxide is a commonly used oxidizer component in chemical mechanical planarization slurries, used in the processing of Cu metallization in microelectronics applications. We studied the electrochemical reduction of hydrogen peroxide on Cu in 0.1 M H2SO4 solutions using methods including cyclic voltammetry, rotating disk electrode experiments, surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy, and density functional theory (DFT) calculations.

Nitrate adsorption and reduction on Cu(100) in acidic solution.

Nitrate adsorption and reduction on Cu(100) in acidic solution is studied by electrochemical methods, in situ electrochemical scanning tunneling microscopy (EC-STM), surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS), and density functional theory (DFT) calculations. Electrochemical results show that reduction of nitrate starts at -0.3 V vs Ag/AgCl and reaches maximum value at -0.