title: Coarsening and pearling instabilities in silver nanofractal aggregates.
abstract: We investigate the morphological changes of 3D supported fractal aggregates generated through the deposition of silver clusters on graphite. The fractal relaxation, activated after their formation by perturbing them either by thermal annealing or by using a surfactant, as oxide molecules, carried by silver clusters in a subsequent deposition, shows evidence of two distinct fragmentation patterns. The post coarsening, driven by thermal heating, gives a broad asymmetrical distribution of fragments in agreement with a random process, whereas the entire silver fractal pearling fragmentation is driven by chemical adjunction of the surfactant.
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire Aimé Cotton, CNRS UPR 3321, Bâtiment 505, University Paris-Sud, Campus d'Orsay, F-91405 Orsay Cedex, France.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Lando
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Kébaïli
authors.forename: Ph
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Cahuzac
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Masson
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Bréchignac