
Hadar (Bratt) Nahor and Wayne D. Kaplan, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Technion, Haifa
A secondary electron HRSEM micrograph of a single-crystal Ni particle on a (111) YSZ substrate. The Ni particle is oriented with the (111) plane parallel to the substrate surface and is covered by several grains of a different phase containing mostly Si and O. Although covered by another phase, the characteristic crystal shape of Ni can be easily recognized.
In this work, agglomeration of a Cr-doped Ni film ("solid state dewetting") on YSZ substrates was carried out to form equilibrated Ni(Cr)-YSZ interfaces. Due to Si contamination in the furnace, the agglomerated Ni particles were covered by an un-expected polycrystalline layer.