ABSTRACT
The sintering of copper nanoparticles deposited on a clean (001) copper surface has been studied in real time using a novel in-situ ultrahigh vacuum (UHV) transmission electron microscope with a UHV DC sputtering attachment. The particles were found to assume an initially random orientation on the foil, reorienting upon heating to assume the orientation of the substrate by a mechanism involving classical sintering and grain growth, contrary to expectation. The experiment was inspired by that of Gleiter, where rotation of macroscopic copper balls to low energy configuations was observed upon annealing. We present the results of our study and discuss the differences in reorientation mechanisms in the case of macro- and nano-scale particle sintering.
