The Effect of Nanoparticle Clustering on Optoelectronic Property

Metal nanoparticles have been extensively investigated for the applications in micro-nano electronics, plasmonics, and chip packaging due to their enhanced thermal, mechanical and electrical properties at the nanoscale. For instance, surface-to-volume ratio and particle distribution significantly affect the sintering and melting behavior of nanoparticles relative to bulk properties. Hence, understanding the characteristic behavior of these materials is vital for the use of these nanoparticles in existing and new applications. It has been shown that at the nanoscale van der Waals forces are the dominant force between particles, which results in particle agglomeration and creates particle clustering. In this paper, we show how this nanoparticle clustering effects the optoelectronic property of the domain by applying the finite difference frequency domain method. This is the first step towards understanding the modeling of the heat transfer that characterizes the laser particle interaction for additive manufacturing using nanoparticles.