title: Contact between submicrometer silica spheres.
abstract: Recently, the scope of the investigation of the deformation mechanism extended to the micrometer and submicrometer regimes. The sphere-substrate contact method was usually used because it is rather difficult to make two micrometer or submicrometer spheres contact each other precisely. Here, we used the sphere-sphere contact method via a novel, simple process to investigate the deformation of spheres. The silica particle size ranges from 400 to 900 nm. Traditionally, the harder the particle, the smaller both the contact radius and the adhesion force. Therefore, it is widely accepted that silica particles should undergo elastic deformation, but we found that silica particles underwent plastic deformation rather than elastic deformation because of van der Waals interaction. The contact radii were observed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM).
authors.affiliation: Institute of Precision Optical Engineering, Department of Physics, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, China.
authors.forename: Xiao-Dong
authors.initials: XD
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Zheng-Xiang
authors.initials: ZX
authors.lastname: Shen
authors.forename: Jin-Long
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Hong-Fei
authors.initials: HF
authors.lastname: Jiao
authors.forename: Xin-Bin
authors.initials: XB
authors.lastname: Cheng
authors.forename: Xiao-Wen
authors.initials: XW
authors.lastname: Ye
authors.forename: Ling-Yan
authors.initials: LY
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Zhan-Shan
authors.initials: ZS
authors.lastname: Wang
mesh_terms: D008855:Microscopy, Electron, Scanning; D008863:Microspheres; D054118:Nanospheres / Q000737:chemistry / Q000648:ultrastructure; D012822:Silicon Dioxide / Q000737:chemistry*
chemical_list: D012822:Silicon Dioxide