Effect of Lead and Bismuth on the De-Wetting of Continuous Argentum Films

Abstract

The work is devoted to the study of the thermal dispergation of polycrystalline silver films, which occurs in the presence of low-melting metal. It was found that the liquid phase of lead or bismuth promotes the rapid decay of an initially continuous film into separate islands. In this case, one-component silver films of the same thickness remain continuous up to higher temperatures. The activation energy of the dewetting process, estimated near the melting temperature of the low-melting component, is 0.5 eV and 0.1 eV for Pb/Ag and Bi/Ag films, respectively. The values obtained are significantly lower than the typical values of the activation energy for solidphase diffusion. This indicates the important role of the liquid-phase mass transfer in the dispergation of Pb/Ag and Bi/Ag films.