Room temperature evolution of gold nanodots deposited on silicon

In this work, the morphological and structural evolution of gold nanodots deposited on Si substrates has been monitored for 2.4?×?10³?h. Gold nanodots on Si are of great scientific interest because they can be used in numerous ways, for example as subwavelength antennas in plasmonics, as electrical contacts in nanometric devices, or as catalysts for the formation of quasi-1dimensional nanostructures. Their characteristics have been studied in a very large number of papers in literature, and among the several aspects, it is known that continuous Au films peculiarly interact with Si by interdiffusion even at room temperature. It would be expected that also small nanostructures could undergo to an interdiffusion and consequent modifications of their structure and shape after aging. Despite the cruciality of this topic, no literature papers have been found showing a detailed morphological and structural characterization of aged Au nanodots. Au nanoparticles have been deposited by sputtering on Si and stored in air at temperature between 20 and 23?°C and humidity of about 45?%, simulating the standard storage conditions of most of the fabrication labs. The morphological and structural characterizations have been performed by bright field transmission electron microscopy (TEM). A specific procedure has been used in order to avoid any modification of the material during the specimen preparation for the TEM analysis. A digital processing of the TEM images has allowed to get a large statistical analysis on the particles size distribution. Two different types of nanoparticles are found after the deposition: pure gold crystalline nanodots on the Si surface and gold amorphous nanoclusters interdiffused into the Si subsurface regions. While the nanodots preserve both morphology and structure all over the time, the amorphous agglomerates show an evolution during aging in morphology, structure, and chemical phase.