Sintering Summary

This is a table summary of the power and voltage settings required for the sintering process. Regarding the physical dimensions of the sample, no correlation to sintering power, or required potential is being found.

File	Lenght(nm)	Area(nm2)	Power(uW)	Potential(V)
0116-04	393	80000	100	1.7
0116-05	252	48800	7	0.19
0119-02	585	201500	5	1.5
0119-05	224	76500	20	2.0
0119-13	487	49900	1	1.95
0122-01	411	15100	4	8.04
0122-02	465	38100	0.5	7.0

The area is the occupied space of the sample in the viewing plane. (Gives some estimate on sample size). The length is the probe to probe distance, measured with a mean error of 55nm.

Details on the sintering process of the nano particles

When the particles fuses together conductance increases. (exp. 0119-02)

I have now made some detailed plots on the observed current-jump that occurs when the nano particles fuses together. This was observed for seven of the eight experiments.

In the box archive I have put a data table for the results on the electrical properties. The samples don’t have so well defined geometry, but at least they can be aranged unde some basic shapes as wire-, cluster- and grape-shaped. In three cases the need power to sinter the particles was below 1~uW, two cases at 5.9uW and 7.1uW and another two cases at 23.5uW and 34.2uW which is the highest value of them all.

Detail study on the melting of one nanoparticle

TEM images before- and after-melting of one particle.

Detail plot when one particle melts.

In this experiment we manged to study the melting of one single silver nano particle of size 50 nm. What we do is driving a electric current through the sample and continually increasing the power which results in melting of the particles. After the particle have melted a carbon-shell is left behind and the resulting drop in electric resistance is about 800 Ohm.

If one checks the movie from the experiment, one can see that in the beginning of the experiment the same contact particle as mentioned above melts a little with a resulting small decrease in size followed by a resistance increase of 240 Ohm.

More sintering data…

I have now uploaded all the plots to the Flickr sintering page

in-situ TEM-SPM movies

Now all the movies from the experiments regarding the sintering project has been uploaded to the YouTube-channel.
Sintering movies playlist at YouTube