Investigation of the geometric structure of small deposited Au clusters

Abstract

The investigation of new materials is nowadays propelled by the possibility to create size selected clusters of any desired materials. With the improvement of new 3rd generation synchrotron sources it should be possible to measure the geometric structure of clusters as small as several atoms in size. So far studies using spectroscopic techniques have focused on electronic and magnetic properties of small deposited metal clusters which could show new promising physical and chemical properties. In this work we present a development towards disentangling structural effects from pure electronic effects as function of cluster size, with a main goal to investigate the geometry of deposited Au clusters on a Si wafer stabilized with an Al cap layer. In our work we are going to use grazing incidence small angle x-ray scattering (GISAXS) and x-ray absorption spectroscopy (EXAFS) to achieve this goal.