Nucleation and growth of metal whiskers

TL;DR

This paper presents a theory explaining metal whisker formation driven by electrostatic polarization, providing formulas for nucleation and growth rates, and suggests controlled growth through surface plasmon polaritons.

Contribution

It introduces a new theoretical framework for metal whisker nucleation and growth, linking electrostatic effects and surface excitations to whisker development.

Findings

Provides closed-form expressions for nucleation and growth rates.

Explains the influence of surface imperfections and external bias.

Predicts controlled whisker growth via surface plasmon polaritons.

Abstract

The existence of metal whiskers is attributed to the energy gain due to electrostatic polarization of needle shaped metal filaments in the electric field induced by surface imperfections: contaminations, oxide states, etc. A proposed theory provides closed form expressions for the whisker nucleation and growth rates, explains the range of whisker parameters and effects of external biasing. It predicts a well controlled whisker growth on any metal surface via generating surface plasmon polariton excitations.