Fundamentals and present state of surface decoration

In-situ reflection high-energy electron diffraction study of epitaxial growth of Cu on NaCl (100) under oblique angle vapor deposition

“…However, the major diffraction spots represent the epitaxial grains with the [001] orientation. The incident vapor flux on the atomic steps present on the substrate leads to a decoration pattern with occasional anomalous orientation of the initial nuclei as suggested in references [19,21]. With a deposition rate of~1.2 nm/ min and a substrate temperature of~150°C, our observation of the initial nuclei orientation is consistent with the results in the literature [1,3,5].…”

“…Moreover, the filament of the deposition source was also degassed prior to the deposition. Also it is well known that the contaminants and the step morphology of the NaCl surface can strongly influence the nucleation and orientation of the first nuclei and the resulting crystal [18][19][20][21]. Therefore, the NaCl substrate was annealed from the back side, as shown in Fig.…”

Interaction of metal clusters with surface steps

“…they obey the atomistic theory of nucleation. I n accordance with that the line density nL of metal clusters formed a t the steps was found [17] not to depend on the step height.…”

“…For Se (at 25 "C), Bi (at 150 "C), P b (at 25 and 150 "C), and I n (at 200 "C) the cluster density n L was found to be small or negligible a t monosteps, but it was observed to increase with increasing step height. This allowed the conclusion to be drawn [17] that for these metals (at temperatures as indicated above in brackets and higher) the critical nucleus is larger than one atom; they behave in a "classical)' way, i.e. the classical theory of nucleation has to be applied.…”

Ordered nanostructures by site-specific heterogeneous nucleation

“…We have recently reported a non-lithographic method using nucleation on reconstructed ceramic surfaces to produce a high density of Pt nanoparticles, 20-50 nm in size [19]. The operative mechanism is very different from the step-decoration techniques that have been used on alkali halide and other surfaces which are similar to grapho-epitaxy [20,21].…”