Tin whiskers are a well known phenomena in the electronics industry which, while known about, do not appear to be very well understood. While they form on tin plated surfaces and can grow to lengths of thousands of times the thickness of that tin plating there has been no observed depletion of tin around the base of these formed whiskers. It is known that the whiskers grow out from the plating but I can't find any explanations or understanding as to how tin atoms could migrate from remote areas of the plating from different directions to build a tin whisker from it's base.

I have seen images of significantly more dense zinc whiskering which might suggest that the mass of zinc whiskers comes close to or (impossibly?) exceed the mass of zinc in the plating.

Does anyone know of any research done in to this phenomena?

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