An STM and Monte Carlo study of the AlF3 thin film growth on Cu(111)

作者：Candia A E^*; Gomez L; Vidal R A; Ferron J; Passeggi M C G Jr

来源：Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics , 2015, 48(26): 265305.

DOI：10.1088/0022-3727/48/26/265305

• aluminium fluoride
• copper
• films growth
• insulator-on-metal interfaces
• scanning tunnelling microscopy
• Monte Carlo method
• diffusion

We report measurements of AlF3 thin film growth on Cu(1 1 1) at room temperature by means of scanning tunneling microscopy. The growth proceeds by the formation of fractal islands characterized by a very corrugated surface. Through uncovered zones and island density we determined a diffusion length of similar to 25 nm for the adsorbed molecules. Even with this large diffusion length the step-edges do not appear fully decorated. These experimental results are contrasted with simulations based on a limited diffusion aggregation model and Metropolis Monte Carlo.
Additionally, the results of the AlF3 sub-monolayer growth on Cu(1 1 1) are compared with our previous results on Cu(1 0 0), finding that both systems show more differences than similarities. Thus, while the growth on Cu(1 0 0) shows fully decorated step-edges, on Cu(1 1 1), they present non-covered zones even at coverages as high as 0.7 monolayers. Supported on MC simulations we suggest that the qualitative difference between both faces is due to different step-edge behaviour.

• 出版日期2015-7-8