Transition from Disorder to Order in Thin Metallic Films Studied with Angle-Resolved Photoelectron Spectroscopy

Abstract

The transition from disorder to order in Ag film grown on Au(111) was investigated by monitoring the quantum well states using angle-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy. Our results show that the binding energies do not alter, but the in-plane dispersion alters from flat to parabolic when the film is annealed. We suggest that there are isolated and ordered patches scattered across the film at an early stage of the transition and that atoms inside the patches are fully ordered along the surface normal. These ordered patches grow and merge together as the annealing temperature increases.

The influence of electron confinement, quantum size effects, and film morphology on the dispersion and the damping of plasmonic modes in Ag and Au thin films

“…Similar results have been reported for graphite [329]. Moreover, temperature drives several phenomena occurring in films such as surface metal-insulator transitions [330,331], enhanced oxidation processes [332], the formation of alloys [333][334][335][336], the structural rearrangement of the film [317], the desorption [337] of the adlayer and changes in the character of the QWS confined in the film [338].…”

“…The enhancement of the free-electron character of the QWS by annealing [338] thus causes the emergence of a negative linear term in the SP dispersion, as in modified Ag single-crystal surfaces [107,108]. Nonetheless, the value of the linear coefficient is still higher than the linear coefficient of the SP dispersion curve of alkalis [192,195,324,339], aluminium [196,340,341], or alkaline-earth metals [201].…”

An energy-dependent photoemission study on line-shape analysis in determining the absolute coverage of metallic thin films

“…The rate of deposition was calibrated by the layer-resolved surface state and verified with a quartz crystal microbalance. The deposited Ag films were disordered because of the low temperature of the substrate, but became crystalline on annealing near room temperature [1,9].…”

Characterizing the wetting of metallic thin films with angle-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy

“…1, the dispersions of the Shockley states of the transitional state are broadened, their effective masses are larger, and their binding energies move slightly toward to the Fermi level. All these observations imply that there exists random lateral confinement of these states; [3][4][5] the Ag film consists of flat ordered patches with substantial variation of their lateral size and shape.…”

“…Such a film is generally considered to constitute a quantum well; the dispersions of its electronic states are directly linked to the film properties, e.g., thickness, lateral size, roughness. [2][3][4][5][6] In this report, we demonstrate that the wetting of a metallic thin film, a complicated dynamic process, becomes explored on monitoring the evolution of the confined electronic states in that film; for this purpose we apply thin Ag films on Cu͑111͒. Ag/Cu͑111͒ is extensively utilized as a model system for the study of heteroepitaxial growth with a great lattice mismatch.…”