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Penetration of thin C60 films by metal nanoparticles

Nature Nanotechnology volume 5, pages 335–339 (2010)Cite this article

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Abstract

Metal nanoparticles supported by thin films are important in the fields of molecular electronics, biotechnology and catalysis, among others. Penetration of these nanoparticles through their supporting films can be undesirable in some circumstances1 but desirable in others2,3,4, and is often considered to be a diffusive process. Here, we demonstrate a mechanism for the penetration of thin films and other nanoscopic barriers that is different from simple diffusion. Silver clusters that are soft-landed onto a monolayer of C60 supported by gold sink through the monolayer in a matter of hours. However, the clusters are stable when landed onto two monolayers of C60 supported on gold, or on one monolayer of C60 supported on graphite. With backing from atomistic calculations, these results demonstrate that a metallic substrate exerts attractive forces on metallic nanoparticles that are separated from the substrate by a single monolayer.

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Figure 1: STM images and corresponding line profiles of Ag309±3 on one and two monolayers of C60 on Au(111).
Figure 2: Height distributions of Ag309±3 on one and two monolayers of C60 on Au(111) after deposition at 165 K and after annealing steps as indicated.
Figure 3: Atomistic calculations for nanoscopic barrier penetration.
Figure 4: Ag309±3 on one and two monolayers of C60 on HOPG after deposition at 165 K and 12 h at room temperature.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) for funding within the priority program SPP 1153.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Technische Universität Dortmund, Experimentelle Physik I, Dortmund, 44221, Germany

    Stefanie Duffe, Niklas Grönhagen, Lukas Patryarcha, Benedikt Sieben & Heinz Hövel

  2. Universität Freiburg, Fakultät für Physik, Hermann-Herder-Straße 3, Freiburg, 79104, Germany

    Chunrong Yin, Bernd von Issendorff & Michael Moseler

  3. Fraunhofer Institute for Mechanics of Materials IWM, Wöhlerstraße 11, Freiburg, 79108, Germany

    Michael Moseler

  4. Freiburg Material Research Center, Stefan-Meier-Straße 21, Freiburg, 79104, Germany

    Michael Moseler

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  1. Stefanie Duffe
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Contributions

S.D., N.G., L.P., B.S. and H.H. conceived, designed and performed the experiments and analysed the data. C.Y. and B.v.I. conceived and designed the cluster machine and took part in the experiments. M.M. performed the atomistic calculations. All authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Heinz Hövel.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Duffe, S., Grönhagen, N., Patryarcha, L. et al. Penetration of thin C60 films by metal nanoparticles. Nature Nanotech 5, 335–339 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2010.45

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