Temperature-dependent morphological evolution of clustered gold surface

摘要

The present pragmatic deals with the surface morphology and the temperature induced modifications of gold surface. The gold surface consists of three dimensional (3D) large nanoclusters and the shape of these nanoclusters was identified as cap like structure with approximately circular periphery. The effect of temperature on the gold surface has been characterized by Scanning Tunnelling Microscopy technique. Annealing the gold surface at 473 K induce inter-diffusion of the 3D-nanoclusters, while the formation of nanoscale step and terrace morphology near the cluster boundary has been detected at 573 K. This study also reveals that the clusters size and roughness of gold surface varies differently in different range of annealing temperature.