MORPHOLOGY AND ELECTRONIC-STRUCTURE OF GD WIRES STUDIED WITH SCANNING-TUNNELING-MICROSCOPY

We report on the fabrication of Gd nanowires studied by in-situ scanni ng tunneling microscopy (STM). Gd wires of monoatomic height and a few nanometers width are stabilized on W(110) along the surface steps upo n annealing of a sub-monolayer Gd film at 1100 K. At 1200 K, diffusion of Gd islands into the W(110) surface layer is observed. Scanning tun neling spectroscopy data of the Gd wires reveals an image-potential st ate at congruent to 3.2 eV above the Fermi energy, which is used to ob tain large element-specific contrast in the STM images.