THE INFLUENCE OF SURFACE-DEFECTS ON THE GROWTH-BEHAVIOR OF ADSORBED XENON LAYERS

Surface defects like steps and kinks tend to act as heterogeneous nucleation centers and are found in this work to influence the growth mode of physisorbed Xe layers on a stepped-kinked Ru(001) surface. Taking advantage of the difference in 5p1/2 electron binding energy between Xe atoms in the first layer (in contact with Ru) and Xe atoms in the second layer (ontop of Xe), respectively, it is found that step defects on the Ru(001) surface induce a three-dimensional (3D) Xe cluster growth before saturation of the first monolayer. This behaviour is also found to be temperature dependent. Between 56 and 90 K the tendency for clustering decreases with increasing temperature. On a perfectly flat Ru(001) surface only strict layer-by-layer growth is found in the same temperature range.