Nano Express
Low-energy structures of clusters supported on metal fcc(110) surfaces
1 Key Laboratory of Micro and Nano Photonic Structures (Ministry of Education), Department of Optical Science and Engineering, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China
2 Applied Ion Beam Physics Lab, Institute of Modern Physics, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China
Nanoscale Research Letters 2011, 6:633 doi:10.1186/1556-276X-6-633
Published: 15 December 2011Abstract
The low-energy structures (LESs) of adatom clusters on a series of metal face-centered cubic (fcc) (110) surfaces are systematically studied by the genetic algorithm, and a simplified model based on the atomic interactions is developed to explain the LESs. Two different kinds of LES group mainly caused by the different next nearest-neighbor (NNN) adatom-adatom interaction are distinguished, although the NNN atomic interaction is much weaker than the nearest-neighbor interaction. For a repulsive NNN atomic interaction, only the linear chain is included in the LES group. However, for an attractive one, type of structure in the LES group is various and replace gradually one by one with cluster size increasing. Based on our model, we also predict the shape feature of the large cluster which is found to be related closely to the ratio of NN and NNN bond energies, and discuss the surface reconstruction in the view of atomic interaction. The results are in accordance with the experimental observations.
PACS: 68.43.Hn; 68.43.Fg.
