Aluminum’s exceptional properties, such as its high strength-to-weight ratio, excellent thermal conductivity, corrosion resistance, and low neutron absorption cross-section, make it an ideal material for diverse nuclear industry applications, including aluminum plating for the building envelope of nuclear power plants. However, plating aluminum presents challenges due to its high reactivity with oxygen and moisture, thus, complicating the process in the absence of controlled environments. Plating under an inert atmosphere is often used as an alternative. However, maintaining an inert atmosphere can be expensive and presents an economic challenge. To address these challenges, an innovative approach is introduced by using deep eutectic solvents (DES) as a substitute for traditional aqueous electrolytes due to the high solubility of metal salts, and wide electrochemical window. In addition, DESs offer the benefits of low toxicity, low flammability, and environmentally friendly, which makes DESs candidates for industrial-scale applications. In this study, we employed an AlCl3-Urea DES as the electrolyte and investigated its potential for producing aluminum coatings on copper substrates under controlled conditions, for example, current density, deposition duration, and temperature. A decane protective layer, non-polar molecular, has been used to shield the AlCl3-Urea electrolyte from the air during the electrodeposition process. The electrodeposition was successful after being left in the air for two weeks. This study presents a promising and innovative approach to optimizing aluminum electrodeposition using deep eutectic solvents, with potential applications in various areas of the nuclear industry, including fuel cladding, waste encapsulation, and radiation shielding.

Chemical environments of near-field (Engineered barrier and surrounded host rock) can influence performance of a deep geological repository. The chemical environments of near-field change as time evolves eventually reaching a steady state. During the construction of a deep geological repository, O2 will be introduced to the deep geological repository. The O2 can cause corrosion of Cu canisters, and it is important predicting remaining O2 concentration in the near-field. The remaining O2 concentration in the near field can be governed by the following two reactions: oxidation of Cu(I) from oxidation of Cu and oxidation of pyrite in bentonite and backfill materials. These oxidation reactions (Cu(I) and pyrite oxidation) can influence the performance of the deep geological repository in two ways; the first way is consuming oxidizing agents (O2) and the second way is the changing pH in the near-field and ultimately influencing on the mass transport rate of radionuclides from spent nuclear fuel (failure of canisters) to out of the engineered barrier. Hence, it is very important to know the evolution of chemical environments of near-field by the oxidation of pyrite and Cu. However, the oxidation kinetics of pyrite and Cu are different in the order of 1E7 which means the overall kinetics cannot be fully considered in the deep geological repository. Therefore, it is important to develop a simplified Cu and pyrite oxidation kinetics model based on deep geological repository conditions. Herein, eight oxidation reactions for the chemical species Cu(I) were considered to extract a simplified kinetic equation. Also, a simplified kinetics equation was used for pyrite oxidation. For future analysis, simplified chemical reactions should be combined with a Multiphysics Cu corrosion model to predict the overall lifetime of Cu canisters.