Book Reviews

Milan Paunovic and Mordechay Schlesinger,Fundamentals of Electrochemical Deposition.John Wiley & Sons: New York (1998). 301 pages,£45±50

The number of texts solely devoted to electrodepositionas a science (and a technology) are far too few and agood up to date tome in this area is therefore welcome.This book joins an impressive Electrochemical SocietySeries, which is listed at the front. It is interesting to notethat Modern Electroplating (third edition) by FrederickLowenheim is also contained in this list. Obviously thisnew book is in very ®ne company!The authors have put together a volume encompass-

ing a very wide range of electrodeposition material.They commence in the early chapters with basicelectrochemistry, covering water and ionic solutions,metals and metal surfaces as well as the metal-solutioninterphase, electrode potentials and the kinetics andmechanism of electrodeposition. It could be arguedthat this information could easily be found elsewhereand in greater depth; however, the reviewer does nothold with this opinion as the inclusion of this materialproduces a fuller approach to the science of electrode-position and allows this text book to be more `self-contained'.Further chapters cover the very important areas of

nucleation and growth in electrodeposition as well aselectroless and displacement deposition, each chaptergiving an adequate amount of information and also anexcellent list of references and further reading. Laterchapters include the e�ect of additives, electrodepositionof alloys and some very much up to date information onin-situ characterisation of deposition, mathematicalmodelling of electrochemistry as well as a more broadapproach to characterising metal surfaces and thin ®lms.Finally, to bring the book right up to date, there arechapters on electrodeposited multilayers and interdi�u-sion in thin ®lms.So what are the reviewer's ®nal thoughts on this

volume? It is a theoretical book in many ways (this is nota criticism) and doesn't carry detailed applied informa-tion that, say, Lowenheim's book does. What it doessucceed in doing is packing an awful amount ofinformation into one volume, increase that informationwith a reference and further reading lists at the end ofeach chapter and you have a really good text. It is thekind of book you can use as a ®rst `port of call' whenexamining a new subject area. The reading lists guideyou further into the subject and enable the beginning ofa more indepth search. In conclusion, `Fundamentals ofElectrochemical Deposition' by Paunovic and Schle-singer should be an important addition to the bookshelfof the advanced researcher as well as important refer-ence to both undergraduate and postgraduate course

students who have this subject area as part of theircourse.

G.D. WilcoxLoughborough UniversityU.K.

JuÈ rgen O. Besenhard,Handbook of Battery Materials.Wiley-VCH (1999), ISBN 3-527-29469-4,618 pages £210

As the author states in the Preface, the use of batteriescontinues to rise as more consumer products (such asmobile phones and portable PCs) and industrial devel-opments (including battery- and fuel cell assisted vehi-cles) rely upon electrochemical power sources.This book aims to ®ll a gap between books on the

(electro)chemistry of batteries and the many texts on thespecialised properties of batteries. While the bookappears long (over 600 pages) the treatment is, in fact,concise and it is easy to ®nd information on a particularcell or material. I was pleased to see a comprehensiveindex provided at the end of the book.The book is divided into sections on Fundamental

and General Aspects of Electrochemical Power Sources,Materials for Aqueous Electrolytic Batteries and Mate-rials for Alkali Metal Batteries. There are 23 contribu-tions from over 40 international authors. The handbookfocuses on batteries; fuel cells are not consideredalthough several of the contributions provide informa-tion on materials used in such devices.The ®rst part of the text concisely deals with thermo-

dynamics, kinetic performance, practical batteries andthe global competition between primary and secondarybatteries. The reminder of the book provides speci®ccontributions on particular types of cell or electrodematerial. I have particularly appreciated the contribu-tions on ``Carbons'' by K. Kinoshita and on ``SolidElectrolytes'' by P. Birke and W. Weppner, the latterbeing illustrated by several colour drawings to show thecrystallographic structure of key conductive solids.A diverse amount of material is presented in the form

of, e.g., chemical reactions, line drawings, tables ofperformance data and photographs. While there is someinconsistency in the format of graphical plots, readersshould ®nd the presentation to be clear and easy tointerpret.This handbook convinces the reader of the overrid-

ing importance of materials properties in the construc-tion of batteries and their resultant performance. It isalso very important to be aware of diverse powersystems when developing novel batteries and fuel celldevices.

Journal of Applied Electrochemistry 29: 1139±1140, 1999. 1139Ó 1999 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

This book provides a useful compilation of data onelectrode materials, construction of cells, the perfor-mance of batteries and their applications. It shouldprove useful to academic and industrial colleaguesinvolved in both the development of power sourcesand the selection of a battery for a particular applica-tion. (Electro)chemists and materials technologists/en-gineers should ®nd the book a useful addition to the

reference literature on electrochemical power sources.The book has already found use in my research group;both research workers and industrial visitors haverapidly found material of interest.

Frank WalshUniversity of PortsmouthU.K.

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