Application of Atomic Force Microscopy to Assess a Copper Molten Mark Formed by Short Circuit

A wide variety of physical and chemical detecting methods have been proposed for discriminating between an electric arc beads that caused a fire, versus one that was caused by the fire itself. The simplest proposed method claims that examination of the molten marks in a bead under a microscope will suffice to make the distinction. This paper describes the microscopic investigation of a copper molten mark formed by short circuit on a copper wire used in ordinary life in china (AC 220V). Generally, copper molten marks of the bead are examined by using optical (OM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). In this paper, OM and AFM were employed to investigate a molten mark formed in laboratory. AFM observation reveals that AFM could be an auxiliary method to investigate the copper molten mark formed in the fire in order to confirm the reasons of the fire.