Adhesion between nanoparticles

Magazine article, 1999

A study of the contact and adhesion between panicles with clean surfaces (free from oxide and other contamination) is important but increasingly more difficult to perform as the particle size is reduced to a nanoscale. A reproducible way of finding such contacts between a large number of nanoparticles has been developed. Cobalt particles within the size range 5–200 nm have been obtained by ageing a solution-treated Cu-2Co (w/o) alloy at 600–800 °C, followed by the carbon film extraction technique. The dipole adhesion stress field was clearly observed in TEM. Convergent beam electron diffraction (CBED) proved that the free panicles were likely to contact with a common interface, and they often orientated in the same direction. This work establishes a solid experimental base for computational image matching of the adhesion properties of nanoparticles.