TY - JOUR
T1 - Sb-Te alloy nanostructures produced on a graphite surface by a simple annealing process
AU - Kuwahara, Masashi
AU - Uratsuji, Hideaki
AU - Abe, Maho
AU - Sone, Hayato
AU - Hosaka, Sumio
AU - Sakai, Joe
AU - Uehara, Yoichi
AU - Endo, Rie
AU - Tsuruoka, Tohru
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant (No. 13056766 ) and the Cooperative Research Project Program (Program No. H25/A01) of the Research Institute of Electrical Communication, Tohoku University . We would like to especially thank H. Kojima and N. Arai for their encouragement during this work.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
PY - 2015/8/15
Y1 - 2015/8/15
N2 - We have produced Sb-Te alloy nanostructures from a thin Sb 2 Te 3 layer deposited on a highly oriented pyrolytic graphite substrate using a simple rf-magnetron sputtering and annealing technique. The size, shape, and chemical composition of the structures were investigated by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), and energy dispersive X-ray spectrometry (EDX), respectively. The shape of the nanostructures was found to depend on the annealing temperature; nanoparticles appear on the substrate by annealing at 200 °C, while nanoneedles are formed at higher temperatures. Chemical composition analysis has revealed that all the structures were in the composition of Sb:Te = 1:3, Te rich compared to the target composition Sb 2 Te 3 , probably due to the higher movability of Te atoms on the substrate compared with Sb. We also tried to observe the production process of nanostructures in situ using SEM. Unfortunately, this was not possible because of evaporation in vacuum, suggesting that the formation of nanostructures is highly sensitive to the ambient pressure.
AB - We have produced Sb-Te alloy nanostructures from a thin Sb 2 Te 3 layer deposited on a highly oriented pyrolytic graphite substrate using a simple rf-magnetron sputtering and annealing technique. The size, shape, and chemical composition of the structures were investigated by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), and energy dispersive X-ray spectrometry (EDX), respectively. The shape of the nanostructures was found to depend on the annealing temperature; nanoparticles appear on the substrate by annealing at 200 °C, while nanoneedles are formed at higher temperatures. Chemical composition analysis has revealed that all the structures were in the composition of Sb:Te = 1:3, Te rich compared to the target composition Sb 2 Te 3 , probably due to the higher movability of Te atoms on the substrate compared with Sb. We also tried to observe the production process of nanostructures in situ using SEM. Unfortunately, this was not possible because of evaporation in vacuum, suggesting that the formation of nanostructures is highly sensitive to the ambient pressure.
KW - Nanoneedles
KW - Nanoparticles
KW - Narrow gap semiconductor
KW - Phase change materials
KW - Sb Te
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U2 - 10.1016/j.apsusc.2015.03.199
DO - 10.1016/j.apsusc.2015.03.199
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84930030644
SN - 0169-4332
VL - 346
SP - 366
EP - 371
JO - Applied Surface Science
JF - Applied Surface Science
ER -