Nanoparticle formation induced by low-energy ion bombardment of island thin films

Metal Nanoclusters: Electronic Aspects and Physico-Chemical Characterization

“…One of the most promising systems from this sense is the Ag/Si couple, where we were able to prove the complete lack of mixing [123]. One of the most promising systems from this sense is the Ag/Si couple, where we were able to prove the complete lack of mixing [123].…”

“…First, in a catalytic reaction the metal particle size, in particular in nano size range, plays a crucial role. Recent application of thin film technology based techniques offers a new approach to fabricate uniform size of metal nanoparticles as detailed and discussed [119][120][121][122][123]. However, the intrinsic activity of the site on, e.g., terraces, corners, or kinks is not identical.…”

“…The scheme of the process can be seen in Figure 4 [123]. The morphological changes of a silver island thin film deposited onto native oxide covered Si during etching with low energy Ar + ions are summarized in Figure 5 [123].…”

“…The first of them, the so-called ballistic processes are connected to the random motion of the atoms in the collision cascade which always lead to random mixing. A detailed discussion of the interplay between the ballistic and chemically guided processes and their impact on the morphology development during ion etching of island thin films is described in Reference [123]. The direction of these relaxation processes depends on the thermochemical properties of the components of the island/substrate couple [151][152][153][154].…”

Modeling gold/iron oxide interface system

“…The target substrate distance was set to 7 cm, and the target normal intersected the center of the substrate, while the angle of incidence of the laser beam onto the target was around 30 degree with respect to its normal. In previous studies on nanoparticle nucleation during pulsed laser deposition [16] it was demonstrated that, if the particle formation takes place on the surface of a support material, the resulting particle shape is rather flat, nearly two-dimensional islands are formed. On the other hand, if the deposition is carried out in the presence of an Ar background gas, a vapor phase homogeneous particle nucleation is observed [17] with more or less spherical particle shapes.…”