A theoretical exploration of strain-mediated interaction for supported nanoclusters

The action of nanoclusters on supporting base is a basic problem in epitaxial growth and catalysis. For a special case of metal clusters on oxide surface, the metal–metal and metal-oxide interactions are usually short-range. So there are some questions. Is the cluster–cluster interaction also short-range? And these clusters are free from each other when several angstroms away? After a detailed analysis, we think that there is a special mechanism for them to provide a strain-mediated interaction. This is an indirect interaction, and its effective range is much larger than chemical bonding. So it may lead to some interesting results such as self-organization and self-assembly. The purpose of this work is to check this idea, and find out a clear physical picture of the strain-mediated interaction.