The Influence of Thin Gold Electrodes on the High-Temperature Impedance of Oxide Glasses

Abstract

The influence of thin gold electrodes on the electrical measurements of glasses at high temperatures was studied using impedance spectroscopy. The impedance was measured several times over a wide frequency range from 10 mHz to 1 MHz and the temperature ranged from 213 to 673 K under air and nitrogen atmospheres. The results showed a drop in the conductivity of more than an order of magnitude at a temperature around 603 K during heating. An additional relaxation process was found at the low-frequency region. The occurred process was correlated with the thermal disintegration of the gold nano-layer used as an improvement in the electrical contact. The possible ambiguous interpretation of high-temperature impedance spectra was presented as a consequence of performing the electrical measurements only during heating or cooling while using unstable thin gold electrodes. Moreover, a possible solution to this problem was proposed.

Transformation of bimetallic Ag–Cu thin films into plasmonically active composite nanostructures

“…Drastically increasing of resistance of the film during its heating is associated with breaking electrical continuity. That phenomenon was observed for example by Wójcik et al during impedance spectroscopy measurements 49 . In Fig.…”

Thermal Instability of Gold Thin Films

“…It could play a key role, especially in nanoscale systems, when both the eutectic temperature drastically decreases and the eutectic composition changes, with size reduction [25][26][27][28]. Disintegration of the metallic films could be a problem; for example, during electrical measurements in a wide range of temperatures, which was described by Wójcik et al [29]. On the other hand, dewetting may lead to the formation of plasmonic nanostructures, so-called plasmonic platforms, which has been described in more detail in our previous publications [13,14,23,[30][31][32][33].…”