IP: 79.110.17.73 On: Thu, 06 Dec 2018 19:39:29 Copyright: American Scientific Publishers Delivered by Ingenta Copyright © 2019 American Scientific Publishers All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Article Journal of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Vol. 19, 2770–2774, 2019 www.aspbs.com/jnn Effect of Milling and Annealing on Carbon–Silver System Gražyna Simha Martynková 1 2 ∗ , Fatih Becerik 1 5 , Daniela Plachá 1 2 , Jinbo Pang 3 4 , Hatem Akbulut 5 , Alicja Bachmatiuk 3 , and Mark H. Rummeli 4 6 1 Nanotechnology Centre, VŠB-Technical University of Ostrava, 17.listopadu 15, 708 33 Ostrava-Poruba, Czech Republic 2 IT4 Innovations, VŠB-Technical University of Ostrava, 17.listopadu 15, 708 33 Ostrava-Poruba, Czech Republic 3 Centre of Polymer and Carbon Materials, Polish Academy of Sciences, M. Curie-Sklodowskiej 34, Zabrze 41-819, Poland 4 Leibniz-Institut für Festkörper- und Werkstoffforschung, Dresden, P.O. Box 270116, D-01171 Dresden, Germany 5 Sakarya University, Engineering Faculty, Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, Esentepe Campus, 54187, Sakarya, Turkey 6 Key Laboratory of Advanced Carbon Materials and Wearable Energy Technologies of Jiangsu Province, Soochow University, Suzhou, 215006, China Mechanical treatment of graphite silver mixture followed by heat treatment showed morphology and structure changes of both components. Silver is being distributed over graphite flakes randomly with higher concentration on the edges and nanometric size, which was observed using scanning and transmission electron microscopy. The annealing temperature 1300  C is higher than melting temperature of silver (961.8  C) and base on phase diagram C–Ag (C. L. Chen, et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 96, 253104 (2010).) silver is being transferred from liquid phase to solid phase at rapid cooling, which is giving various crystallinity. Keywords: Graphite, Milling, Silver, Structure, Morphology. 1. INTRODUCTION The changes in the crystallinity of graphite during ball milling have been observed on numerous cases 1–9 and the overall conclusion is that graphite passes through a nanocrystalline-amorphous phase transition. Effect of mechanical treatment of graphite using shearing forces by ball milling is known for creation various curved carbon structures. 10–12 Several works proved a creation of car- bon nanotubes or closed shell nanoparticles, originated by catalytical growth with help of catalyst present form steel ball mill 10 12 or adding catalyst such as Co 13 or Ni 14 or another. 16–17 Annealing has additional effect on the nanostructures of ball-milled natural graphite. Connan et al. 15 found that anneal could reorganize the structure of ball-milled graphite with presence of yttrium. How- ever, the mechanical treatment is known as well as mean for homogenization of two or more components using dry way. Low energy milling 18 provides well homogenized carbon and metal mixture. Optimal homogenization is required in case of advanced nanocomposites either as two component composites 19 or multi component systems. 20–22 The challenge remains to disperse the ultra-fine carbons ∗ Author to whom correspondence should be addressed. uniformly in the microstructure when bulk manufactur- ing processes are applied. The carbon/metal interface is very important in the strengthening of the composite. Improper bonding could lead to inefficient load trans- fer. The mechanical properties have been seen to vary a lot more than those predicted by micromechanical mod- els for bulk composite materials, since they are depen- dent on many other factors such as interfacial bonding and load transfer, curvature of the carbons and clustering phenomena. 20 In our experiment mixed graphite and silver pow- ders will be milled in agate ball mill to observe the mutual influence on the structure of both materials dur- ing milling. Additionally the effect of annealing will be studied. Structure and morphology changes will be stud- ied using electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction and spec- troscopy methods. 2. EXPERIMENTAL DETAILS 2.1. Materials Silver powder 99.9% purity, particle size in range of 10–100 m (provided by company Kovy a Chemie, CR). Graphite powder of well crystalline state, particle size average 100 m (provided by company Fichema, CR). 2770 J. Nanosci. Nanotechnol. 2019, Vol. 19, No. 5 1533-4880/2019/19/2770/005 doi:10.1166/jnn.2019.15869