https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2003-00159-8
Thermal and chemical nanofractal relaxation
1
Laboratoire Aimé Cotton, CNRS, bâtiment 505, Université Paris-Sud, 91405
Orsay Cedex, France
2
Laboratoire de Physique des solides, bâtiment 510,
Université Paris-Sud, 91405 Orsay Cedex, France
Corresponding author: a catherine.brechignac@lac.u-psud.fr
Received:
10
September
2002
Published online:
3
July
2003
We studied shape relaxation of nano-fractal islands, during annealing, after their growth from antimony cluster deposition on graphite surface. Annealing at 
C shows evidence of an increase of the fractal branch width with time followed by branch fragmentation, without changing the fractal dimension. The time evolution of the width of the arm suggests the surface self-diffusion mechanism as the main relaxation process. With Monte Carlo simulations, we confirmed the observed behavior. Comparison is done with our previous results on fragmentation of nano-fractal silver islands when impurity added to the incident cluster promotes rapid fragmentation by surface self-diffusion enhancement [CITE].
PACS: 61.46.+w – Nanoscale materials: clusters, nanoparticles, nanotubes, and nanocrystals / 61.43.Hv – Fractals; macroscopic aggregates (including diffusion-limited aggregates) / 81.07.-b – Nanoscale materials and structures: fabrication and characterization
© EDP Sciences, Società Italiana di Fisica, Springer-Verlag, 2003
