ARTIFICIAL METAL NANOCLUSTER CRYSTALS

Abstract

Artificial metal nanocluster crystals, (i.e. periodic lattices consisting of identical metal nanoclusters) were fabricated using a novel technique in which surface mediated magic clustering was used to achieve identical cluster size, while the Si(111)-7 × 7 surface was used as a template for ordering the clusters. The universality of this strategy was demonstrated by fabricating more than 10 different nanocluster arrays with different metals and alloys. The atomic structures, formation mechanism and stability of the nanoclusters were studied with in situ scanning tunneling microscopy combined with first-principles total energy calculations. Our study shows that delicate control of growth kinetics is extremely important for cluster crystal fabrication.