Self-assembled pit arrays as templates for the integration of Au nanocrystals in oxide surfaces

Self-Assembled Nanostructures as Templates for the Integration of Nanoparticles in Oxide Surfaces

“…In the first way, gold nanoparticles were obtained by rf magnetron sputtering from gold target in Ar atmosphere at high temperature (from 700°C to 800°C) [10], after depositing LSMO films with different surface morphologies. In the second way, the gold nanoparticles were synthesized according to modified procedure reported by K. C. Grabar et al [11].…”

Nanoscale mechanical control of surface electrical properties of manganite films with magnetic nanoparticles

“…Nanostructured thin lms were deposited under a pure oxygen partial pressure (0.19 mbar) at a high temperature (850-900 C) with a wide range of nominal thickness (between 20 nm and 100 nm), 44 while the detailed microstructure of LSMO lms can be also found in ref. 44. Iron oxide NPs have been deposited under a pure oxygen pressure of 0.06 mbar at 700 C.…”

“…This strain facilitates growth of various self-organized morphologies such as pit arrays [55][56][57] which can serve as templates for subsequent self-assembly of NPs. 44 The strain state in our lms is analyzed by the asymmetric reciprocal space mapping of the reection (103) for the nanostructured 100 nm thick LSMO lm grown on top of the STO substrate ( Fig. S1(a) of the ESI †).…”

“…On the other hand, the estimated out of-plane lattice constant a t,LSMO ¼ 3.882(6)Å is slightly smaller than the corresponding bulk value of 3.889Å, as expected due to presence of a tensile strain. 44,55 Nevertheless, the higher value of the out-of-plane parameter 3.882(6)Å compared with the one of the fully strained lms of 3.868Å (ref. 58) indicates the presence of a small quantity of oxygen vacancies, as previously discussed.…”

Oxide Single-Crystal Surfaces: A Playground for Self-assembled Oxide Nanostructures

“…Similarly to the 90 • atomic step-edges of the well-known Si(001) surface [33], faceted atomic step-edges of hundreds of nanometers can be observed on oxide single-crystal surfaces, such as perovskite SrTiO 3 (001) [29] and SrTiO 3 (110) [34], and spinel MgAl 2 O 4 (001) [35]. Similarly to surface facets of low energy (low Miller indexes) driven by thermodynamic processes (large D/F), elastic interactions and surface polarity reasons [36,37], epitaxial nanoislands or nanopits can also exhibit faceted edges from tens to hundreds of nanometers along the lowindex crystallographic directions [17,38]. The shape of the nanoislands (pyramidal, hut, or hexagonal) depends on the crystallographic orientation, symmetry, epitaxial strain, surface energy, polarity, etc.…”