AVS 60th International Symposium and Exhibition
    Thin Film Wednesday Sessions
       Session TF+AS+NS+SE-WeA

Paper TF+AS+NS+SE-WeA9
Thermal Annealing Study of Nickel Nanorod Arrays

Wednesday, October 30, 2013, 4:40 pm, Room 102 C

Session: Beam and Glancing Angle Deposition (GLAD) Techniques
Presenter: D. Ye, Virginia Commonwealth University
Authors: E. Alrashid, Virginia Commonwealth University
D. Ye, Virginia Commonwealth University
Correspondent: Click to Email
Nickel nanorods arrays were prepared on silicon (100) substrates using the glancing angle deposition (GLAD) technique. The nanorods with different lengths were then annealed in a split-top tube furnace in vacuum with Argon background. The annealing temperature was maintained at 500 0C for 30 minutes, or varied from 300 – 600 0C at a step of 100 0C. After the thermal processing, the nanorods were studied by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) studied. It was found that with increasing annealing temperatures, the intensity of XRD peaks for both Ni (111) and Ni (200) increased, which indicates that re-crystallization occurs after annealing, leading to the formation of larger grain sizes. In the temperature dependent study, we found that surface melting is dominant at temperatures lower than 500 0C while coalescence of nanorods happens at 600 0C, resulting significant morphology change at high annealing temperature. The well-separated nickel nanorods join together to create a porous continuous film with interconnected pores after coalescence, which is potentially useful in the applications of catalyst support, fuel cells, and electrodes for battery.