TA Success Stories: Mutual solubility of components in binary nanostructures, from the Karazin Kharkiv National University to AGH-UST

19/05/2021 | Success Stories

TA Success Stories: Mutual solubility of components in binary nanostructures, from the Karazin Kharkiv National University to AGH-UST

TA Success Stories: MSCBN
TA Success Stories: MSCBN

Many successful projects stem from transnational access provided by ESTEEM3. This week, we focus on the “Mutual solubility of components in binary nanostructures” project from Karazin Kharkiv National University (Ukraine) which was granted access to the International Centre of Electron Microscopy for Materials Science (IC-EM) at the AGH-UST in Krakow (Poland) one of the ESTEEM3 TA provider.

The “Mutual solubility of components in binary nanostructures” project, carried by Dr. Sergiy Bogatyrenko from the Karazin Kharkiv National University, focuses on understanding the effect of a scale on the phase equilibria in binary nanosystems. The project was granted access to facilities and expertise of the International Centre of Electron Microscopy for Materials Science (IC-EM) at the AGH-UST in Krakow in Autumn 2019, as part of the transnational access activities of ESTEEM3.

The main results of the project

The kinetics of the formation of solid solutions in Au-Ni and Bi-Ge nanostructures was investigated directly in TEM (in situ) using the most advanced techniques of electron microscopy. The interphase boundaries in the binary systems, the structure of the solid solutions and their compositions, as well as distribution of dilute atoms, were investigated using HAADF STEM, X-ray energy-dispersive spectrometry based on ChemiSTEM technology, and electron energy loss spectroscopy methods down to the atomic level.

These results highlighted the significant increase of the mutual solubility of the components in nanostructured materials. Namely, for the Au-Ni binary system, it was revealed that the components immiscible in a bulk, form a homogeneous solid solution at room temperature upon the reduction of size down to about 2 nm.

Successful outcomes

Dr. Bogatyrenko published two manuscripts in renownedjournals:

Interested in Transnational Access to the leading European state-of-the-art Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM)? Find out more about the procedure here!