Synthesis and characterization of carbon-coated Cu-Ni alloy nanoparticles and their application in conductive films

Abstract In this paper, an efficient fabrication route is presented for carbon-coated Cu-Ni alloy nanoparticles (Cu1-xNix@C NPs; x  = 0–1.0) by means of electrical wire explosion under methane gas. The Cu-Ni binary system, which is considered to be an ideal isomorphous system, has carbon growth controllable by tuning the atomic fraction of Cu and Ni with largely different carbon solubility. As the Ni content increases, the average particle size and carbon layer thickness increase. It is notable that the carbon layer is very thin,