Abstract
By means of ion bombardment of clean Au(111) films, atomically flat nanoparticlesof various shapes and sizes were created, ranging from several tens ofnm2 down toonly a few nm2. Both two-dimensional Au islands as well as one-dimensional Au nanowire-like structureshave been investigated by means of low-temperature scanning tunneling microscopy andspectroscopy. We were able to probe their local electronic structure in a broad energyrange, which was found to be dominated by pronounced size-dependent confinement effects.Mapping of the local density of states revealed complex standing wave patterns that arisedue to interference of scattered Au surface state electrons at the edges of the Aunanoparticles. The observed phenomena could be modeled with high accuracy bytheoretical particle-in-a-box calculations based on a variational method that can beapplied to ‘2D boxes’ of arbitrary polygonal shape and that we have previouslysuccessfully applied to explain the electronic wave patterns on Co islands onAu(111). Our findings support the general validity of this particle-in-a-box model.
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