Monographs

Reactive multilayer systems represent an innovative approach for potential usage in chip joining applications. As there are several factors governing the energy release rate and the stored chemical energy, the impact of the morphology and the microstructure on the reaction behavior is of great interest. In the current work, 3D reactive microstructures with nanoscale Al/Ni multilayers were produced by alternating deposition of pure Ni and Al films onto nanostructured Si substrates by magnetron sputtering. In order to elucidate the influence of this 3D morphology on the phase transformation process, the microstructure and the morphology of this system were characterized and compared with a flat reactive multilayer system on a flat Si wafer. The characterization of both systems was carried out before and after a rapid thermal annealing treatment by using scanning and transmission electron microscopy of the cross sections, selected area diffraction analysis, and differential scanning calorimetry. The bent shape of multilayers caused by the complex topography of silicon needles of the nanostructured substrate was found to favor the atomic diffusion at the early stage of phase transformation and the formation of two intermetallic phases Al0.42Ni0.58 and AlNi3, unlike the flat multilayers that formed a single phase AlNi after reaction.

Fabrication of economic and high-performance electrodes for electrocatalytic oxygen evolution reaction (OER) accounts for a crucial issue associated with developing powerful and practical water splitting systems. In this work, free-standing Ni/Ni-M (M = Fe, Co, Mo) bimetallic oxides core/shell nanorod arrays (Ni/Ni-M NRAs) were prepared through electroless deposition of transition metal species on black nickel sheet (nickel nanorod arrays (Ni NRAs)) followed by electrochemical oxidation. All three types of Ni/Ni-M NRAs demonstrated enhanced electrocatalytic activity toward oxygen evolution reactions (OER). Especially, Ni/Ni-Fe NRAs electrode exhibit small onset potential of 1.535 V at current density of 10 mA&hahog;cm^-2. In contrast, the OER durability of these three samples was distinct. At 500 mV constant overpotential, the current density loss in OER of Ni/Ni-Fe NRAs was merely 13.5% for a period of 20000 s; but Ni/Ni-Mo and Ni/Ni-Co NRAs had almost disappeared catalytic activity under the identical conditions. According to many reports, the results were different for the superior OER stability of Ni-based bimetallic catalysts. Electrochemical analysis revealed that the NRAs structure dramatically improves charge transfer efficiency and electrochemically active surface area (ECSA). The present study might provide a new insight to design and fabricate more practical and high-performance Ni-based electrodes for OER.

The electrical contact resistance (ECR) of copper (Cu-ETP R200, soft) contacts for resistance welding (RW) is characterized. ECR plays a major role in the RW process and provides local heat generation between the parts. A special determination method is used on different testing variants to observe the influence of contact pressure (two levels: 68, 155 MPa), contact temperature (20-550 ˚C), and surface parameters, like roughness or oxide layer thickness, on the specific electrical contact resistance (SECR). For each surface parameter, three different levels are investigated. The study shows decreasing SECR with higher mechanical load on the contact and a more complex behavior for increase in contact temperature. SECR shows a characteristic behavior for contact states near the temperature-dependent tensile strength of the base material for rough and clean surfaces, where SECR approaches toward zero. The variation of oxide layer thickness and surface roughness has a strong influence on the resulting SECR and both surface parameters show a strong coupling regarding their effects.

This work reports the formation of circular cavities and Au-SiOx nanoflowers after annealing of thin Au film deposited on SiO2/Si substrates, and the transformation of nanoflowers to nanosprouts with increasing the annealing time. Two reference experiments indicate that both H2 and Si are indispensable for the above structures. The formation of cavities can be attributed to the SiO2 layer decomposition and the product, volatile SiO, provides a Si source for the formation of nanoflowers at the early stage. A model is proposed to indicate that SiO gas produced at the Si/SiO2 interface can diffuse to the surface assisted by the defects in the SiO2 layer before the decomposed cavities are exposed. Then the exposing of those cavities introduces another volatile SiO from the active oxidation of Si substrate, provoking a change in the direction of the main Si source, which in turn makes the one nanoparticle of the nanoflower split in two and finally form the nanosprout. The model about the escape of SiO further details SiO2 decomposition process, and the transformation mechanism from nanoflowers to nanosprout sheds light on a feasible nanofabrication method to design tunable size and shape of nanoparticles.

Efficient and green exfoliation of bulk MoS2 into few-layered nanosheets in the semiconducting hexagonal phase (2H-phase) remains a great challenge. Here, we developed a new method, water-assisted exfoliation (WAE), for the scalable synthesis of carboxylated chitosan (CC)/2H-MoS2 nanocomposites. With facile hand grinding of the CC powder, bulk MoS2 and water followed by conventional liquid-phase exfoliation in water, this method can not only efficiently exfoliate the 2H-MoS2 nanosheets, but also produce two-dimensional (2D) CC/2H-MoS2 nanocomposites. Interestingly, the intercalated CC in MoS2 nanosheets increases the interlayer spacing of 2H-MoS2 to serve as good candidates for the semiconductor devices. 2D CC/2H-MoS2 nanocomposites show superior electronic rectification effects in nonvolatile write-once-read-many-times memory (WORM) behavior with an ON/OFF ratio over 103, which can be rationally controlled by the weight ratios of CC and MoS2. These findings by the WAE method would open tremendous potential opportunities to prepare commercially available semiconducting 2D nanocomposites for promising high-performance device applications.