Electrodeposition of zinc-cobalt alloys from choline chloride–urea ionic liquid

•The electrodeposition behavior of Zn-Co alloy in ChCl/urea ionic liquid was studied.•The co-deposition process of Zn-Co alloys in ionic liquid is normal type.•The nucleation mechanism of Zn-Co alloy is an instantaneous process.•The composition, structure and morphology of Zn-Co alloys were potential dependent. The electrodeposition behavior of zinc-cobalt (Zn-Co) alloy was investigated in choline chloride/urea (1:2 molar ratio) deep eutectic solvent containing 0.11M ZnCl2 and 0.01M CoCl2. Cyclic voltammetry revealed that Co reduced preferably with respect to Zn and anomalous codeposition of Zn-Co did not occur in this solvent. Chronoamperometric investigations combined with field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) indicated that the electrodeposition of Zn-Co alloys followed the mechanism of instantaneous nucleation. Energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), grazing incidence X-ray diffraction (GI-XRD) and SEM results showed that the deposition potential influenced the compositions, phase structure and surface morphology of the Zn-Co alloys.