Temperature and chemical effects on the interfacial energy between a Ga-In-Sn eutectic liquid alloy and nanoscopic asperities

Yujin Han; Pierre-Marie Thebault; Corentin Audes; Xuelin Wang; Haiwoong Park; Jian-Zhong Jiang; Arnaud Caron

doi:10.3762/bjnano.13.72

Temperature and chemical effects on the interfacial energy between a Ga-In-Sn eutectic liquid alloy and nanoscopic asperities

Beilstein J Nanotechnol. 2022 Aug 23:13:817-827. doi: 10.3762/bjnano.13.72. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Yujin Han¹, Pierre-Marie Thebault^{1

2}, Corentin Audes^{1

2}, Xuelin Wang³, Haiwoong Park¹, Jian-Zhong Jiang³, Arnaud Caron¹

Affiliations

¹ KOREATECH - Korea University of Technology and Education, School of Energy, Material and Chemical Engineering, Cheonan, 31253 Republic of Korea.
² UTT - University of Technology Troyes, 1004 Troyes, France.
³ International Center of New-Structured Materials (ICNSM), Laboratory of New-Structured Materials, State Key Laboratory of Silicon Materials, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310027, People's Republic of China.

Abstract

The interfacial energies between a eutectic Ga-In-Sn liquid alloy and single nanoscopic asperities of SiO _x , Au, and PtSi have been determined in the temperature range between room temperature and 90 °C by atomic force spectroscopy. For all asperities used here, we find that the interfacial tension of the eutectic Ga-In-Sn liquid alloy is smaller than its free surface energy by a factor of two (for SiO _x ) to eight (for PtSi). Any significant oxide growth upon heating studied was not detected here, and the measured interfacial energies strongly depend on the chemistry of the asperities. We also observe a weak increase of the interfacial energy as a function of the temperature, which can be explained by the reactivity between SiO _x and Ga and the occurrence of chemical segregation at the liquid alloy surface.

Keywords: atomic force microscopy (AFM); interfacial energy; liquid alloy.

Grants and funding

Financial support from the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2017YFA0403400), National Natural Science Foundation of China (11975202 and U1832203), and the Education and Research Promotion Program of Koreatech in 2020 are gratefully acknowledged.