Imaging a buried interface by scanning tunneling spectroscopy of surface states in a metallic system

Alloying process at the interface of silver nanoparticles deposited on Au(111) substrate due to the high-temperature treatments

“…Moreover, these results suggest that concentration of Ag is low in the surface region so it seems that the top layers are built almost of pure gold forming the rare random Ag-Au alloy. A very similar conclusion can be found in the literature [14][15][16] for the monoatomic silver layers grown epitaxially on gold.…”

“…These observations are additionally confirmed by the XPS spectra recorded after gentle sputtering of the investigated sample showing a slight increase in the silver line intensity. As far as we know the diffusion process in the Ag/Au(1 1 1) interface has been investigated for Ag monolayers deposited on Au(1 1 1) using molecular beam epitaxy method [14][15][16]. The results of those investigations suggest the surface alloying due to diffusion of silver atoms into the gold substrate during the annealing process.…”

Metallic thin films on stepped surfaces: lateral scattering of quantum well states

“…Ag was evaporated as shallow wedges along the θ-axis of figure 1(a). During the evaporation, the substrate was held at 150 K, and then the film was post-annealed to 300 K. With this process, one ensures a local homogeneous thickness and a sharp interface with minimum Au/Ag intermixing [16,17]. Moreover, as reflected in STM images (figure 5), this evaporation procedure leads to a coherent step superlattice at the film surface, which replicates the step lattice of the Au substrate underneath.…”

Embedded Co nanostructures on Au(001) substrate studied by scanning tunneling microscopy

“…Since magnetic properties are very sensitive to the Co/Au interface, detailed information on nanostructures of surfaces and interfaces with respect to the morphology is essential for understanding the structural and magnetic properties of bcc Co. Imaging of buried islands in metallic substrates is a generally delicate task by STM, but it is demonstrated here to be practical by virtue of the large difference in interlayer spacing of two metals [10] and the presence of the Shockley surface band [11]. We demonstrate here that the number of Co and Au layers with respect to the buried Co islands can be determined with enough accuracy from the observed height difference by STM.…”