Confining effect of oxide film on tin whisker growth

Yushuang Liu¹，Peigen Zhang¹，Jin Yu¹，Jian Chen¹，Yamei Zhang²，Zhengming Sun¹

1. Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Advanced Metallic Materials,School of Materials Science and Engineering,Southeast University2. Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Construction Materials,School of Materials Science and Engineering,Southeast University

摘 要：Spontaneous tin whisker growth has been mysterious and catastrophic for more than half century. The difficulty in the research on this topic consists of the randomness of the whisker growth, the slow growth rate and many other tricky factors. Herein, with Ti₂SnC-Sn as a new platform, fast tin whisker growth is realized to facilitate the research. The whisker morphology is found to be modulated by oxide film. A striated whisker morphology forms as growing in air, whereas a faceted morphology forms in vacuum.Furthermore, the evolution to the faceted morphology is attributed to the reconstruction of the whisker surface driven by surface energy reduction. The findings might open a new avenue to uncover the myths of this long-standing issue, and thus develop a long-awaited lead-free tin whisker mitigation strategy.

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