Dewetting of template-confined Au films on SiC surface: From patterned films to patterned arrays of nanoparticles

• Micrometric template-confined thin Au films are deposited on SiC.
• The thermal-induced dewetting process of the template-confined Au films on SiC is studied.
• A model for the dewetting process is drawn based on the identification of three regimes for the process.
• Micrometric patterned arrays of Au nanoparticles on the SiC surface are produced.

In this work we report about the template-confined dewetting of Au nanoscale film on SiC substrate in view of a surface patterning control. In this approach, the Au surface pattern order, on the SiC substrate, is established by a template confined deposition on a micrometric scale. Then, a film dewetting process is induced by thermal processes. Using scanning electron microscopy analyses, we studied the dewetting kinetics for Au on SiC and we identified three regimes of the process: a regime I in which holes nucleation in the Au film occurs (characterized by 248 meV activation energy); a regime II consisting in the retraction phenomenon of the film limited by the Au surface diffusion; a regime III corresponding to the merging of the dewetted fronts of holes that come close to each other (resulting in formation of Au nanoparticles). Correspondently, the ordered surface patterns obtained for the Au arrays of nanostructures on a large scale (micrometric) can be changed and controlled for specific applications.