Nucleation and growth of metal whiskers

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.