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Nanopatterning the electronic properties of gold surfaces with self-organized superlattices of metallic nanostructures

Nature Nanotechnology volume 2, pages 617–621 (2007)Cite this article

Abstract

The self-organized growth of nanostructures on surfaces could offer many advantages in the development of new catalysts, electronic devices and magnetic data-storage media1,2,3,4,5. The local density of electronic states on the surface at the relevant energy scale strongly influences chemical reactivity6,7,8,9, as does the shape of the nanoparticles10. The electronic properties of surfaces also influence the growth and decay of nanostructures such as dimers, chains and superlattices of atoms or noble metal islands9,11,12,13,14,15,16. Controlling these properties on length scales shorter than the diffusion lengths of the electrons and spins (some tens of nanometres for metals) is a major goal in electronics and spintronics17. However, to date, there have been few studies of the electronic properties of self-organized nanostructures18,19,20. Here we report the self-organized growth of macroscopic superlattices of Ag or Cu nanostructures on Au vicinal surfaces, and demonstrate that the electronic properties of these systems depend on the balance between the confinement and the perturbation of the surface states caused by the steps and the nanostructures' superlattice. We also show that the local density of states can be modified in a controlled way by adjusting simple parameters such as the type of metal deposited and the degree of coverage.

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Figure 1: Homogeneous electronic properties of gold vicinal surfaces.
Figure 2: Periodic electronic patterns on a self-organized superlattice of silver nanostructures on Au(7 8 8).
Figure 3: Local view of Ag/Au nanostructures.
Figure 4: Electronic density for different growth parameters.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank L. Moreau for his technical support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratoire de Physique des Matériaux UMR7556, Nancy-Université – CNRS, PO Box 239, Vandoeuvre-lès-Nancy, F-54506, France

    Clement Didiot, Stephane Pons, Bertrand Kierren, Yannick Fagot-Revurat & Daniel Malterre

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  1. Clement Didiot
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  2. Stephane Pons
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Contributions

C.D. and S.P. performed the experiments. C.D., S.P. and B.K. analysed the data. S.P. wrote the resulting paper. All the authors conceived and designed the experiments, discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Stephane Pons.

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Didiot, C., Pons, S., Kierren, B. et al. Nanopatterning the electronic properties of gold surfaces with self-organized superlattices of metallic nanostructures. Nature Nanotech 2, 617–621 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2007.301

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