Related papers: Film thickness of Pb islands on the Si(111) surfac…
The growth and ordering of a Pb layer deposited on Cu(001) at 150 K has been studied using atom beam scattering. At low coverage, ordered Pb islands with a large square unit cell and nearly hexagonal internal structure are formed. This is a…
Pb on Si(111)-(7x7) shows surprising nucleation and mass transport dynamics at odds with standard theories. To create local imbalances on stable Pb islands we use the tip of a scanning force microscope. We enforce a short, local contact…
Growth and strain behavior of thin Ag films on Si substrate have been investigated by scanning tunneling microscopy, cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy and high resolution x-ray diffraction studies. Ag islands formed on Si at…
The in-plane effective mass of quantum well states in thin Pb films on a Bi reconstructed Si(111) surface is studied by angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy. It is found that this effective mass is a factor of three lower than the…
We investigate the formation and the coarsening dynamics of islands in a strained epitaxial semi-conductor film. These islands are commonly observed in thin films undergoing a morphological instability due to the presence of the elasto…
In nano-structures such as thin films electron confinement results in the quantization of energy levels in the direction perpendicular to the film. The discretization of the energy levels leads to the oscillatory dependence of many…
Energy-dependent apparent step heights of two-dimensional ultra-thin Pb islands grown on the Si(111)6$\times$6Au surface have been investigated by a combination of scanning tunneling microscopy, first-principles density functional theory…
The appearance of "magic" heights of Pb islands grown on Cu(111) is studied by self-consistent electronic structure calculations. The Cu(111) substrate is modeled with a one-dimensional pseudopotential reproducing the essential features,…
We show from density-functional calculations that Pb(100) thin films exhibit quantum size effect with a bilayer periodicity in film energies, film relaxations, and work functions, which originate from different symmetry of the stacking…
Nickel islands are grown on W(110) at elevated temperatures. Islands with a thickness of two layers are investigated with scanning tunneling microscopy. Spectroscopic measurements reveal that nanometer sized areas of the islands exhibit…
We have studied Pb thin films as a function of the thickness up to 60 monolayers (MLs) using ab initio first principles and model calculations. Magic heights corresponding to a modulated oscillatory pattern of the energy of Pb(111) films…
Abnormally large stability of Pb nanostructures grown on metallic or semiconductor substrates has been observed even for heights of about 30 monolayers. Using both density-functional theory calculations and analytical models, we demonstrate…
Using scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy, we demonstrate that the adsorption of a minute amount of Cs on a Pb mesa grown in the quantum regime can induce dramatic morphological changes of the mesa, characterized by the…
The magnetoconductive properties of ultrathin Pb films deposited on Si(111) are measured and compared with density-functional electronic band-structure calculations on two-dimensional, free-standing, 1 to 8 monolayers thick Pb(111) slabs. A…
Morphological evolution of heteroepitaxial nanoislands toward equilibrium (coarsening) is computed using the detailed continuum model that incorporates the quantum size effect. Results reveal the metastability of the "magic" heights, show…
The Pb/Si(111) thin films were simulated within the density functional theory (DFT). The well-known Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof (PBE) version of the generalized gradient approximation (GGA) and its recent nonempirical successor Wu-Cohen (WC)…
Smectic liquid crystal films a few molecular layers thick that are freely suspended in air are used as a model system to study the coalescence of fluids in two dimensions. High-speed video microscopy is used to observe the coalescence of…
The topological characteristics of Bi and its alloys with Sb have fueled intense debate since the prediction of three-dimensional topological insulators. However, a definitive resolution has not been reached to date. Here, we provide…
Two-dimensional (2D) Pb nanoisland has established an ideal platform for studying the quantum size effects on growth mechanism, electronic structures as well as high-temperature superconductivity. Here, we investigate the growth and quantum…
The reflectance difference (RD) as a function of film thickness was measured during Pb deposition on Si(111)-(6x6)Au surface at 105 K. The oblique incident s- and p-polarized light with energy range 0.25-0.60 eV was used. The component of…