Ar-buffer-assisted deposition of Cu13 on Cu(1 1 1) surfaces

In this paper, the deposition of Cu13 onto Cu(1 1 1) surface through argon buffer layers was investigated by molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. The interactions between Cu–Cu, Cu–Ar, and Ar–Ar were described by Finnis–Sinclair (FS) tight-binding potential and L–J potential, respectively. The impact energy was chosen to be 2–6 eV/atom in order to compare with experimental results. It was observed that with Ar-buffer layers, the Cu cluster deposited on the surface may retain its free cluster symmetry (Ih). Whereas, on originally bare Cu surface, the deposited Cu cluster lost its original symmetry completely and was recrystalized to have the same fcc structure as the substrate. The Ar-buffer dissipates most of the translational energy of the incident cluster. Therefore, it prevents the cluster from being overheated upon impinging. Furthermore, the interaction between Ar and Cu benefits the confinement of the cluster structure. Our study shows that with Ar-buffer layers, the lateral spread of deposited clusters is 20% smaller than that on the bare Cu surface. This is consistent with the experimental findings.