Campus Units

Materials Science and Engineering, Physics and Astronomy, Mathematics, Ames Laboratory, Chemistry

Document Type

Article

Publication Version

Published Version

Publication Date

7-2010

Journal or Book Title

Materials

Volume

3

Issue

7

First Page

3965

Last Page

3993

DOI

10.3390/ma3073965

Abstract

Confinement of electrons can occur in metal islands or in continuous films grown heteroepitaxially upon a substrate of a different metal or on a metallic alloy. Associated quantum size effects (QSE) can produce a significant height-dependence of the surface free energy for nanoscale thicknesses of up to 10–20 layers. This may suffice to induce height selection during film growth. Scanning STM analysis has revealed remarkable flat-topped or mesa-like island and film morphologies in various systems. We discuss in detail observations of QSE and associated film growth behavior for Pb/Cu(111), Ag/Fe(100), and Cu/fcc-Fe/Cu(100) [A/B or A/B/A], and for Ag/NiAl(110) with brief comments offered for Fe/Cu3Au(001) [A/BC binary alloys]. We also describe these issues for Ag/5-fold i-Al-Pd-Mn and Bi/5-fold i-Al-Cu-Fe [A/BCD ternary icosohedral quasicrystals]. Electronic structure theory analysis, either at the level of simple free electron gas models or more sophisticated Density Functional Theory calculations, can provide insight into the QSE-mediated thermodynamic driving force underlying height selection.

Comments

This article is from Materials 3 (2010): 3965, doi: 10.3390/ma3073965. Posted with permission.

Rights

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Copyright Owner

Han et al

Language

en

File Format

application/pdf

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