Highly ordered growth of Fe and Co clusters on alumina on Ni3Al(111)

Template mediated growth of metals has attracted much interest due to the remarkable magnetic but also catalytic properties of clusters in the nanometer range and provides the opportunity to grow clusters with narrow size distributions. We have grown well-ordered Fe and Co clusters on the ultrathin aluminium oxide on Ni3Al(111), a template with a 4.1 nm lattice. The structure of the ≈ 0.5 nm thick oxide film exhibits holes reaching down to the metal substrate at the corners of the (√67 × √67)R12.2° unit cell. Pd atoms trapped in these corner holes create metallic nucleation sites where Fe as well as Co clusters can nucleate and form a well-ordered hexagonal arrangement on the oxide nanomesh. We have studied the morphology of these Fe and Co clusters and applied different methods like scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and surface x-ray diffraction (XRD) to determine the morphology and crystallographic of the clusters. For Fe we found cluster growth in either bcc[110] or bcc[100] direction, depending on the deposition temperature and for Co we found close-packed planes on top of the clusters and random stacking of fcc and hcp planes