High-porosity metal structure formation under stationary nonequilibrium condensation conditions

A substantially new technological approach to the formation of high-porosity metal layers is proposed, which is based on the process of stationary nonequilibrium vapor condensation inside a hollow cathode. The conditions necessary for the manifestation of such a spatially distributed selective nucleation and growth of metal condensates are the realization of only monoatomic critical nuclei and the existence of a critical energy for the binding of adatoms to the growth surface (below this level, the probability of condensate formation is negligibly small). (C) 2005 Pleiades Publishing, Inc.