The Melting Behavior Of Bi, Pb And BiPb Alloy Nanowires In The Process Of Joule Self-Heating

As the miniaturization of electronic devices, the researchers also put forward higherrequirements for the components that make up the devices, and the nano electroniccomponents with small volume and excellent electrical properties have become the focus ofattention. Among them, the one-dimensional metal nanomaterials, especially the metalnanowires, are becoming an important part of electronic devices, which have not only thefunction of connection but also the special electrical properties. However, in the process ofusing, due to the Joule’s heating, metal nanowires are bound to gather some of heat, whichmay lead to its melting or blowing and further affects the work of devices. This subject isdesigned to simulate the electronics circuit environment that metal nanowires are in thenanoelectronic devices, and bismuth, lead and its alloys nanowires arrays fabricated by thetemplate method are put in the specific circuit for achieving the molten nanowires accordingto the joule heating. We analyze the change of the resistance of metal nanowires arrays fromthis process, which further reflects the melting behavior of the metal nanowires arrays. Then,the observation of morphological evolution is carried out using a variety of characterizationmethods. The main contents of this article are as follows:Firstly, Bi, Pb and BiPb alloy nanowire arrays are obtained by using electrodepositionbased on the AAO template. We use X-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopyto analyze the morphology and structure of the nanowires.Secondly, we studied the melting behavior of metal nanowire arrays in the process ofjoule heating for the first time. At first, we adopted the method of fast measuring to determinethe starting melting voltage of Bi and Pb nanowire arrays, and the range of the startingmelting voltage is about between20-30V. Then, we fixed40V at both ends of the nanowirearrays for long time to get the R-t curve. The results show that Bi and Pb nanowire arrays meltcompletely in the process of the first time. And the resistance increases first rapidly and thenslowly, until it reaches the dynamic balance between endothermic and exothermic.Subsequently, in the process of adding voltage to60V by increments of5V for5minutes, theresistance of Bi nanowires dropped suddenly at the instant brunt. However, Pb nanowiresdidn’t appear this phenomenon. This may be related to the semimetal properties anddecomposition of metal clusters of Bi.Finally, we explored the multiple melting by joule heating for the same sample. Theresults show that the resistance of Bi nanowires had a similar change trend that thephenomenon of the decomposition of Bi metal clusters appears in every increase of thevoltage. However, for Pb nanowires, the second and third heating process was similar, whichis different from the first heating process. Combining with the TEM results, we can find thatBi nanowires appear the phenomenon of grain refinement with the adding of heating time. While Pb nanowires showed an unconspicuous phenomenon of grain refinement after the firstheating. The situation of the BiPb alloy nanowires is in between the above phenomena.