Deposition of size-selected metal nanoclusters on a substrate with very low kinetic energy helps to keep the clusters intact with respect to their shape and size as compared to clusters in ight condition. Here we report formation of isolated monodispersed islands of copper of desired size on carbon film by deposition of size selected copper clusters (~ 3 nm) in soft-landing method. Copper clusters were produced by a magnetron based gas aggregation type source equipped with a quardrupole mass filter (QMF) to select size of clusters before landing. Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) study shows that diffusion of islands is very low.
Rhombohedral-stacked few-layer graphene (FLG) has been receiving an ever-increasing attention owing to its peculiar electronic properties that could lead to enticing phenomena such as superconductivity and magnetic ordering. Up to now, experimental studies on such material have been mainly limited by the difficulty in isolating it in thickness exceeding 3 atomic layers with device-compatible size. In this work, rhombohedral graphene with thickness up to 9 layers and areas up to ~50 micrometers square is grown via chemical vapor deposition (CVD) on suspended Cu foils and transferred onto target substrates via etch-free delamination. The domains of rhombohedral FLG are identified by Raman spectroscopy and are found to alternate with domains of Bernal-stacked FLG within the same crystal in a stripe-like configuration. A combined analysis of micro-Raman mapping, atomic force microscopy and optical microscopy indicates that the formation of rhombohedral-stacked FLG is strongly correlated to the copper substrate morphology. Cu step bunching results in bending of FLG and interlayer displacement along preferential crystallographic orientations, as determined experimentally by electron microscopy, thus inducing the stripe-like domains. The growth and transfer of rhombohedral FLG with the reported thickness and size shall facilitate the observation of predicted unconventional physics and ultimately add to its technological relevance.
Cu2Ta4O12 (CTaO) thin films were successfully deposited on Si(100) substrates by pulsed-laser deposition technique. The crystalline structure and the surface morphology of the CTaO thin films were strongly affected by substrate temperature, oxygen pressure and target - substrate distance. In general during deposition of CTaO the formation of a Ta2O5 phase appeared, on which CTaO grew with different orientations. We report on the experimental set-up, details for film deposition and the film properties determined by SEM, EDX and XRD.
Polyynes are linear sp-carbon chains of finite length consisting in a sequence of alternated single and triple bonds and displaying appealing optical and electronic properties. A simple, low cost and scalable production technique for polyynes is the submerged arc discharge (SAD) in liquid, which so far, has been mainly exploited in organic solvents. In this work, we investigated in detail SAD in water as a cheap and non-toxic solvent for the production of polyynes. The role of process parameters such as current (10-25 A) and voltage (20-25 V) in the production yield have been investigated, as well as polyynes stability. Polyynes terminated by hydrogen (CnH2: n=6-16) were identified by High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) coupled with UV-Visible absorption spectroscopy and with the support of density functional theory (DFT) calculations. Size-selected polyynes separated by HPLC were analyzed by surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS). The formation process was monitored by in situ SERS using an immersed fiber-optic Raman probe and employing Ag nanoparticles directly produced in the solution by SAD.
Boron forms compounds with nearly all metals, with notable exception of copper and other group IB and IIB elements. Here, we report an unexpected discovery of ordered copper boride grown epitaxially on Cu(111) under ultrahigh vacuum. Scanning tunneling microscopy experiments combined with ab initio evolutionary structure prediction reveal a remarkably complex structure of 2D-Cu8B14. Strong intra-layer p-d hybridization and a large amount of charge transfer between Cu and B atoms are the key factors for the emergence of copper boride. This makes the discovered material unique and opens up the possibility of synthesizing ordered low-dimensional structures in similar immiscible systems.
Palladium diselenide (PdSe$_2$), a new type of two-dimensional noble metal dihalides (NMDCs), has received widespread attention for its excellent electrical and optoelectronic properties. Herein, high-quality continuous centimeter-scale PdSe$_2$ films with layers in the range of 3L-15L were grown using Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) method. The absorption spectra and DFT calculations revealed that the bandgap of the PdSe$_2$ films decreased with increasing number of layers, which is due to PdSe$_2$ enhancement of orbital hybridization. Spectroscopic ellipsometry (SE) analysis shows that PdSe2 has significant layer-dependent optical and dielectric properties. This is mainly due to the unique strong exciton effect of the thin PdSe$_2$ film in the UV band. In particular, the effect of temperature on the optical properties of PdSe$_2$ films was also observed, and the thermo-optical coefficients of PdSe$_2$ films with different number of layers were calculated. This study provides fundamental guidance for the fabrication and optimization of PdSe$_2$-based optoelectronic devices.