On Evil Twins and Their Absent Friends

Abstract: Knowledge on intermetallic compounds and alloys is essential for technology leaps. The latest of these, the so-called digital revolution, started the period of the information age which is characterized by fast information transfer. The constant development of faster and smaller electronic devices comes with the drawback of increased amounts of waste, meaning products that used to by high-end technology. Unsurprisingly, not all parts of an electronic device are recyclable, and some of the intermetallic compounds and alloys are in fact hazardous to the environment. For this reason, bans and restrictions on hazardous materials in electronic devices have been put into legislation in some countries over the past ten years, also in the European Union. The direct consequence of these regulations is that the substitution of the affected metals with others created new interdisciplinary research fields as traditional materials like lead-containing solders are not allowed any longer. The here presented work is not directed towards finding new solder or semiconductor materials. The idea behind is to find and characterize ternary intermetallic compounds that are formed when metal-metal contacts are present in electronic devices. Besides chemical characterization techniques, crystallographic methods such as X-ray diffraction are employed to determine the crystal structure of the novel compounds. This is of particular importance for technical applications as the properties of any given intermetallic compound can neither be understood nor predicted without the knowledge on its crystal structure.