AVS 47th International Symposium
    Processing at the Nanoscale/NANO 6 Thursday Sessions
       Session NS+NANO6-ThM

Paper NS+NANO6-ThM7
Controlled Growth of Metal Nanoclusters on Polymers

Thursday, October 5, 2000, 10:20 am, Room 302

Session: Nanostructured Materials
Presenter: V. Zaporojtchenko, University of Kiel, Germany
Authors: V. Zaporojtchenko, University of Kiel, Germany
K. Behnke, University of Kiel, Germany
A. Thran, University of Kiel, Germany
T. Strunskus, University of Kiel, Germany
F. Faupel, University of Kiel, Germany
Correspondent: Click to Email
Metal nanoparticles dispersed on a polymer surface as well within a polymeric matrix offer interesting electronic, optical and catalytic properties due to their small dimensions.@footnote 1@ For metals with moderate reactivity the high cohesive energy of the metal in combination with the weak metal-polymer interaction leads to metal aggregation on the surface. The nucleation and growth of noble metals (Cu, Ag, Au) as well as more reactive metals (Ni, Cr) onto fully cured polymer films with different composition are considered. The metal deposits which were prepared in situ by physical vapor deposition were characterized by combination of transmission electron microscopy (TEM), atom force microscopy (AFM), x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and a novel very sensitive radiotracer technique.@footnote 2@ An extreme variation in metal condensation behavior was observed on the different polymers. It appears to be related to the polymer surface energy and suggests a connection between macroscopic wetting and atomic condensation. The effect of metal-polymer interaction as well as the deposition parameters and surface pretreatment on the nucleation process has been investigated in order to understand how the morphology of the metal deposit can be affected. Influencing the basic processes@footnote 3@ occuring in the initial stages of metal-polymer interface formation it is possible to form 2-d metal nanoparticle-polymer composits with a large variation of the metal cluster size and metal cluster density on the polymer surface. @FootnoteText@ @footnote 1@ Metal Clusters, ed. by W. Ekardt, John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, England 1999. @footnote 2@ A. Thran, M. Kiene, V. Zaporojtchenko and F. Faupel, Phys. Rev. Lett. 82, 1903 (1999). @footnote 3@ V. Zaporojtchenko, T. Strunskus, K. Behnke, M. Kiene, and F. Faupel, J. Adesion Sci. Technol., 14(3), 467 (2000).