Abstract
A sound knowledge and understanding of the thermal stability of nanowires is aprerequisite for the reliable implementation of nanowire-based devices. We investigate themorphology of Au nanowires annealed isothermally at different temperatures. Duringthe processes, triggered by heating, the wires undergo various configurationalchanges to finally break up into chains of nanospheres at much lower than bulkmelting temperatures due to capillary or so-called Rayleigh instability. The role ofthree parameters, namely, wire diameter, temperature, and annealing time, onthe final morphology is investigated. Both the average sphere diameter and themean spacing between adjacent spheres are larger than the values predicted formaterials with isotropic surface energy. Possible reasons are discussed in the paper.
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