A comparative TEM study of the 3D lattice of tellurium nanoclusters fabricated by different techniques in an opal host

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Abstract
An electron-microscope study of synthetic opals containing tellurium introduced into the regular void array either by melt injection or by evaporation from solution is reported. In the first case, a three-dimensional array of tellurium clusters interconnected by bridges was revealed. The clusters retain the same crystallographic orientation as one moves from one cluster to another. This suggests that cooling after inserting tellurium results in its directional crystallization, which is possibly controlled by the interconnecting channels. The second technique of tellurium introduction produces a nonuniform cluster array, with three-dimensional clusters growing not in all voids. The surface of most of the silica spheres is coated by a thin discontinuous layer of tellurium. This structure of the cluster array accounts for the nonlinear current-voltage characteristic of the object as a whole. A possibility of engineering cluster lattices differing in structural parameters has been demonstrated.

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