Wetting and anisotropy of interfacial energy on the contact boundary of indium nanocryctals and orientied substrate

Abstract

We propose a technique for estimating the wetting and anisotropy of the interfacial energy at the interface between the metal particles (indium) with a substrate based on the construction of the Winterbottom equilibrium shape of the crystal. The effective contact angle and the ratio of interfacial energies at the particle-substrate interface are calculated from the experimental data of the geometric characteristics of the particles obtained by analyzing the AFM images of the samples. The obtained dependences are qualitatively consistent with thermodynamic states and known data for other systems.

Keywords

• interface energy
• wetting
• nanocrystals
• indium
• Winterbottom analysis
• atomic-force microscopic