Capturing Rayleigh-Plateau Instability in Silver Nanowires via Ultrafast Electron Microscopy

In recent years, the development of ultrafast transmission electron microscopy (UTEM) has allowed us to observe ultrafast processes occurring in materials, contributing to a fundamental understanding of a wide range of dynamic processes. In UTEM, while samples are excited with a pulsed laser to trigger reactions, a second delayed laser pulse is used to stimulate the photoemission of an electron pulse from the cathode. Depending on the reversibility of the studied dynamics, UTEM can be operated either in stroboscopic¹ or single-shot mode². In this presentation, the application of single-shot UTEM in probing irreversible dynamics of materials will be exemplified for the Plateau-Rayleigh instability behavior of silver nanowires upon laser irradiation. By comparing the laser fluence required to initiate the Plateau-Rayleigh instability in silver nanowires on different substrates, it was found that substrate heating was the main driving force for the Plateau-Rayleigh instability in this study. In addition, the complex motions of silver nanowires under laser irradiation were systematically investigated by combining the results of UTEM with scanning electron microscopy characterizations. They were determined to be related to nanowire-membrane interactions or pre-existing stresses on the nanowires, demonstrating the potential of single-shot UTEM for the characterization of materials under extreme conditions³.<br/><br/>References<br/><br/>1. Zewail, A. H. Four-Dimensional Electron Microscopy. <i>Science</i> <b>328</b>, 187–193 (2010).<br/>2. LaGrange, T. <i>et al.</i> Single-shot dynamic transmission electron microscopy. <i>Applied Physics Letters</i> <b>89</b>, 044105 (2006).<br/>3. Jiang, S. & Ortalan, V. Capturing Plateau-Rayleigh instability in silver nanowires via ultrafast electron microscopy. <i>Nano Research</i> (2024) doi:10.1007/s12274-024-6770-7.