A Morphological Study of Electroless Deposition in High Magnetic Fields(Crystal Growth, Chemical Reaction and Biology)

Growth morphology of a silver metal-leaf was investigated in high magnetic fields up to 8T as an experimental approach to the diffusion-limited aggregation (DLA) with the lateral drift of particles. The silver metal-leaves were grown around a square \u27seed\u27 of copper from a AgNO_3 aqueous solution by means of the electroless reduction of silver ions. The growth pattern of the metal-leaf had a typical DLA structure with the fractal dimension of 1.62 in the absence of magnetic field. On the other hand, it had a spiral and dense branching structure at 8T, in which the crossover in the fractal dimension from 1.69 to 2 was observed with increasing length scale. The spiral direction was reversed by the reversal of the applied field. A metal-forest pattern of silver was also investigated, which was grown around a copper ribbon. Its growth morphology changed from the DLA pattern without the field into a canting and dense pattern at 8T