Deposition of AuN 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 analyzed in situ by scanning probe microscopy. Neither diffusion of the clusters 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, whereas multilayer films exhibit a nanostructured morphology. Molecular dynamics simulations, using the same size distribution of incident clusters as in the experiment, reveal the influence of the impact energy on the film morphology. For a low kinetic energy of the incident clusters (0.25 eV/atom), the simulated morphology is in excellent agreement with experimental measurements.