DYNAMICS OF SURFACE ATOMS AND THE GROWTH AND PROPERTIES OF NANOSTRUCTURES

Abstract

The dynamics of surface atoms and simple molecules is closely related to the growth of surface nanostructures. The questions we ask are how atoms diffuse and interact on the surface and what kind of surface nanostructures are formed from such interactions. We also study how the physical property of surface nanostructures is related to their size and thickness. In the last few years we found that metallic nanostructures grown on the Si (111) surface exhibit strong quantum confinement and finite size effects. These effects in turn affect their growth. Some of these studies are (1) how the quantum properties of nanoislands can serve as a template for their own growth, (2) a finite size effect in a structure phase transition of nanoislands of Pb , and (3) growth of metallic nanometer size 2D magic clusters due to both electronic shell structure and atomic bond and geometrical shell structure effects. These studies demonstrate clearly that surface dynamics, electronic and atomic bond effects as well as statistical finite size effect become more and more important as the size of surface islands and clusters reduces to the nanometer range.