Emission of silver atoms during their aggregation on solids

Emission of silver atoms during their aggregation on solids 

The experiments were conducted on similar experimental set-up as shown in Fig. 6.1. Substrate 5 had an internal heater - platinum film deposited on the back side of the substrate. The substrate was heated 

The procedures of experiments were the following [15, 26]. After deposition of a specific quantity of silver on substrate the heating of a tray with silver was turned off, the shutter 7 was opened and the sensor was positioned opposite to the substrate in such a manner that the surface of the sensor was parallel to the surface of substrate. In these experiments we detected an irreversible donor signal of the sensor which can be related to adsorption silver atoms on the sensor made of a zinc oxide film. It is known [27] that silver atoms are donors of electrons. Note that the signals of the sensor were observed only when the sensor was positioned in front of a substrate. There were no signals detected in any other arrangement between sensor and substrate. 

This conclusion is proved by the element analysis of sensors which have registered more than 30 portions of silver emitted from the surface of substrate after completion of deposition of silver on its surface. The experiments on local analysis of tiie sensor indicated that such sensor has areas containing up to 0.3 wt.% of silver in 1 pm. The total amount of silver atoms incident on sensor was 7-10. This means that silver atoms get deposited on the surface of the sensor inhomogeneously, being localized close to defect allocation area which made it possible to detect 

Therefore these experiments showed a very interesting phenomenon, namely the emission of adsorbed silver atoms from the surface of a substrate after accomplishing the deposition process. In these experiments the semiconductor sensors were used in two ways sensor-substrate onto which the silver was deposited from, the tray, which made it possible to monitor the behaviour of silver atoms on the surface of adsorbent and sensor-detector of emitted silver atoms. 

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