Impact energy dependence of Al 13 cluster deposition on Ni(001) surface Y.X. Wang a,b , Z.Y. Pan a,b, * , Q. Wei a,b , A.J. Du a,b , Z. Huang a,b , Y. Xu a,b , Y.K. Ho a,b a Institute of Modern Physics, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China b Ion beam Laboratory, Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200050, China Received 19 June 2001; accepted for publication 20 March 2002 Abstract In this paper, the influence of the impact energy on the initial fabrication of thin films formed by low energy cluster deposition was investigated by molecular dynamics simulation of Al 13 clusters depositing on Ni(001) substrate. In the caseofsoft-landing,(0.01eV/atom),clustersarerearrangedfromI h symmetryintofcc-likeclustersonthesurface.Then they aggregate each other, which result in thin film growing in 3D island mode. While, growth will be in layer-by-layer mode at the impact energy of a few electron volt due to the transient lateral spread of cluster atoms induced by dense collisioncascade.Thiseffecthasbeentracedtocollisioncascadeinsidethecluster,whichisenhancedbycollisionwitha hard Ni substrate. Ó 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Clusters; Growth; Epitaxy; Aluminum; Nickel 1. Introduction The investigation of the low-energy cluster beam deposition (LECBD) is of great importance in synthesizing nanostructured thin films of novel propertiesandhasattractedconsiderableattention [1–3]. The growth of a film was known to be a complicated process, which relates to its structure and properties. In general, there are three growth modes for metal particle deposition on metal substrate, that is, the Frank–van deer Mere mode (FM, layer-by-layer growth), the Volume-Weber mode (VW, three-dimensional islands growth), and the Stranski–Krastanov (SK, three-dimen- sional island growth after layer-by-layer growth). Most of the earlier studies were concentrated on the equilibrium thermodynamics and kinetics of growth [4,5]. With these theories, it is difficult to predict the growth mode and dynamics of LECBD, because non-equilibrium dominate the growth process and many parameters, e.g. the specific cluster and substrate material, the impact energy and the temperature, etc., affect the growth mode. In consequence, a diverse behavior of thin film growth can be observed with the change of those parameters mentioned above. So it stimu- lated a number of theoretical and experimental Surface Science 512 (2002) 128–134 www.elsevier.com/locate/susc * Corresponding author. Address: Institute of Modern Physics, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China. Fax: +86-21-6510-4949/6564-3815. E-mail address: zypan@fudan.ac.cn (Z.Y. Pan). 0039-6028/02/$ - see front matter Ó 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PII:S0039-6028(02)01691-6