Synthesis of Five-fold-twinned silver microwhiskers by physical vapor deposition

Abstract

Pentagonal noble metal crystals, with a five-fold-twinned (FFT) structure that exhibits prominent noncrystallographic symmetry, have been the focus of research in the past several decades due to their promising applications in various fields such as chemical and biological sensors, electronics and optoelectronics. A great deal of previous experimental studies and theoretical analyses suggested that such an FFT structure could only exist in the nanoscale crystals, because of the lateral restriction in growth, or in microscale crystals with re-entrant grooves that can effectively release the internal strain. In this study, we synthesized the microscale single-crystalline and multi-twinned Ag crystals with various morphologies, using physical vapor deposition (PVD). FFT Ag microwhiskers with diameters up to 10 [Formula: see text]m were produced, but without re-entrant grooves on their side surfaces. Our findings suggest that FFT whiskers can be formed without the use of any surface-capping agents or without necessitating restriction in lateral growth. This further suggests that the current understanding of the surface passivation or the strain-restriction formation of five-fold-twined micro- and nanowhiskers needs improvement.