Growth of self-organized cobalt nanostructures on Au(111) vicinal surfaces

We studied the growth of cobalt on Au(lll) vicinal surfaces in the submonol ayer range. We found that the presence of a surface reconstruction leads to interesting self-organized nanostructures, such as very regular arrays of clusters or nanowires. We show that the use of a vicinal substrate strongly improves their long-range order properties. These results, together with t he periodic faceting behaviour of gold vicinal surfaces, open the way to fa bricate cobalt nanostructures or ultrathin films with original magnetic pro perties. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.