Communication: Unraveling the 4He droplet-mediated soft-landing from ab initio-assisted and time-resolved density functional simulations: Au@4He300/TiO2(110)

An ab-initio-based methodological scheme for He-surface interactions and zero-temperature time-dependent density functional theory for superfluid 4He droplets motion are combined to follow the short-time collision dynamics of the Au@4He300 system with the TiO2(110) surface. This composite approach demonstrates the 4He droplet-assisted sticking of the metal species to the surface at low landing energy (below 0.15 eV/atom), thus providing the first theoretical evidence of the experimentally observed 4He droplet-mediated soft-landing deposition of metal nanoparticles on solid surfaces [Mozhayskiy et al., J. Chem. Phys. 127, 094701 (2007) and Loginov et al., J. Phys. Chem. A 115, 7199 (2011)]This work has been supported by Grant Nos. CCG08-CSIC/ESP-3680 from CSIC-CM, FIS2011-29596-C02-01 and FIS2011-28617-C02- 01 from DGI, Spain (FEDER), and 2009SGR1289 from Generatitat de Cataluny