Deposition of Au-N clusters on Au(111) surfaces. II. Experimental results and comparison with simulations

The formation of gold films obtained by low-energy cluster beam deposition at room temperature in ultrahigh vacuum on a gold (111) surface has been an alyzed in situ by scanning probe microscopy. Neither diffusion of the clust ers on the surface, nor coalescence between clusters has been detected. The films are formed by a random pavement of the surface and as a consequence submonolayer films are composed by three-dimensional isolated particles, wh ereas multilayer films exhibit a nanostructured morphology. Molecular dynam ics simulations, using the same size distribution of incident clusters as i n the experiment, reveal the influence of the impact energy on the film mor phology. For a low kinetic energy of the incident clusters (0.25 eV/atom), the simulated morphology is in excellent agreement with experimental measur ements.