Nucleation of Ag nanodots at the Si(1 1 1)3×1-Ag surfaces

In room temperature deposition of Ag atoms, nanometer scale Ag dots were found to nucleate one-dimensionally along [0 1 1̄] direction on the Si(1 1 1)3×1-Ag surface. The dots had a monolayer height, and the same size (1 nm). The distance between the dots along [0 1 1̄] distributed in a narrow range between 1.2 and 2.0 nm which are as distant as 3a0 to 5a0, where a0 is the unit cell dimension of the 1×1 surface. The dots had self-assembling order until they restarted their growth at above 0.4 ML.