Abstract
Herein, we report a computational model for the morphological evolution of bimetallic nanostructures in a thermal dewetting process, with a phase-field framework and superior optical, physical, and chemical properties compared to those of conventional nanostructures. The quantitative analysis of the simulation results revealed nano-cap, nano-ring, and nano-island equilibrium morphologies of the deposited material in thermal dewetting, and the morphologies depended on the gap between the spherical patterns on the substrate, size of the substrate, and deposition thickness. We studied the variations in the equilibrium morphologies of the nanostructures with the changes in the shape of the substrate pattern and the thickness of the deposited material. The method described herein can be used to control the properties of bimetallic nanostructures by altering their equilibrium morphologies using thermal dewetting.
Highlights
Thermal dewetting on patterned substrates yields metallic nanostructures [1] with a controlled size and arrangement [2] and low cost [3] for various applications, such as highdensity recording media and storage devices [4,5,6,7], electron transporting materials [8,9,10], catalysts for the growth of nanowires and nanotubes [11,12,13], phase-change devices using plasmonic nanogaps [14], plasmonic devices for photodetection [15], plasmon-resonance devices [8,16], electrochemical sensing [17,18], and nano-plasmonic polymerase chain reaction (PCR) [19,20]
The localized surface plasmon resonance can be tuned by controlling the surface morphology, nanoparticle size, and space between nanoparticles to obtain an optimum surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy signal from the metal nanostructures at the target wavelength [22]
Attempts were made to reduce the gap in the nanostructure, this could only be achieved using an additional thermal dewetting process [26]
Summary
Thermal dewetting on patterned substrates yields metallic nanostructures [1] with a controlled size and arrangement [2] and low cost [3] for various applications, such as highdensity recording media and storage devices [4,5,6,7], electron transporting materials [8,9,10], catalysts for the growth of nanowires and nanotubes [11,12,13], phase-change devices using plasmonic nanogaps [14], plasmonic devices for photodetection [15], plasmon-resonance devices [8,16], electrochemical sensing [17,18], and nano-plasmonic polymerase chain reaction (PCR) [19,20]. Thermal dewetting has been used to control and predict the arrangement, spacing, and uniformity of nanoparticles. A substrate with separated nano-templates comprising uniformly arranged nanoparticles were fabricated on a flat plate using thermal dewetting [24], additional processes, such as lithographic patterning, reactive ion etching, and wet etching, were required during the process. A TiO2 nanotube fabricated using thermal dewetting yielded uniform spherical nanoparticles [28], the fabrication of patterned TiO2 required lithography and the photocatalytic processing of the
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