Pseudomorphic growth mode of Pb on the Al13Fe4(010) approximant surface

• Published in: Applied surface science 2015-11, Vol.356, p.862-867
• Main Authors: Ledieu, J., de Weerd, M.-C, Hahne, M., Gille, P., Fournée, V.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adsorption; Aluminum; Approximant; Coalescing; Condensed Matter; Dosing; Islands; Lead; Lead (metal); Materials Science; Physics; Pseudomorphy; Quasicrystal; Scanning tunneling microscopy; STM; Surface chemistry; X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy
• ISSN: 0169-4332; 1873-5584
• DOI: 10.1016/j.apsusc.2015.08.088

[Display omitted] •Pb adsorption has been characterised on the Al13Fe4(010) approximant surface.•A pseudomorphic Pb monolayer is formed at 300K on this highly corrugated template.•The Pb atomic arrangement replicates the motifs observed on the clean surface.•The formation of surface alloys and intermixing can be disregarded.•Efficient energy dissipation of impinging adatoms allows additional layer deposition. We report the adsorption of lead adatoms on the pseudo-10-fold Al13Fe4(010) surface using low energy electron diffraction (LEED), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and scanning tunneling microscopy (STM). For the submonolayer regime, Pb adatoms remain highly mobile across the surface at 300K. STM analysis indicates the formation of irregularly shaped islands of monoatomic height. The latter do not coalesce with increasing coverage. At 0.95MLE coverage, the LEED patterns are consistent with a pseudomorphic growth of the adatoms. This is confirmed by STM measurements which reveal local motifs qualitatively similar to those observed on the clean Al13Fe4(010) surface, i.e. prior to dosing. Apart from the absence of plasmons, the XPS measurements of Pb 4f and Al 2s core levels are comparable to those observed for the Pb/Al(111) system.