Thermal stability of self-assembled ordered three-phase Au–BaTiO3–ZnO nanocomposite thin films via in situ heating in TEM

Shikhar Misra; Di Zhang; Ping Lu; Haiyan Wang

doi:10.1039/D0NR06115H

Thermal stability of self-assembled ordered three-phase Au–BaTiO₃–ZnO nanocomposite thin films via in situ heating in TEM†

Shikhar Misra,^a Di Zhang,^a Ping Lu^b and Haiyan Wang

*^ac

Author affiliations

* Corresponding authors

^a School of Materials Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907, USA
E-mail: hwang00@purdue.edu

^b Sandia National Laboratory, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87185, USA

^c School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907, USA

Abstract

Thermal stability of oxide–metal nanocomposites is important for designing practical devices for high temperature applications. Here, we study the thermal stability of the self-assembled ordered three-phase Au–BaTiO₃–ZnO nanocomposite by both ex situ annealing under air and vacuum conditions, and by in situ heating in TEM in a vacuum. The study reveals that the variation of the annealing conditions greatly affects the resulting microstructure and the associated dominant diffusion mechanism. Specifically, Au nanoparticles show coarsening upon air annealing, while Au and Zn either form a solid solution, with Zn atomic percentage less than 10%, or undergo a reverse Vapor–Liquid–Solid (VLS) mechanism upon vacuum annealing. The distinct microstructures obtained also show different permittivity response in the visible and near-infrared region, while retaining their hyperbolic dispersion characteristics enabled by their highly anisotropic structures. Such in situ heating study in TEM provides critical information about microstructure evolution, growth mechanisms at the nanoscale, and thermal stability of the multi-phase nanocomposites for future electronic device applications.

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Article information

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1039/D0NR06115H
Article type: Paper
Submitted: 23 Aug 2020
Accepted: 28 Oct 2020
First published: 28 Oct 2020

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Nanoscale, 2020,12, 23673-23681

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Thermal stability of self-assembled ordered three-phase Au–BaTiO₃–ZnO nanocomposite thin films via in situ heating in TEM

S. Misra, D. Zhang, P. Lu and H. Wang, Nanoscale, 2020, 12, 23673 DOI: 10.1039/D0NR06115H

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