Adsorption behavior of Fe atoms on a naphthalocyanine monolayer on Ag(111) surface**Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 61390501, 51325204, and 11204361), the National Basic Research Program of China (Grant Nos. 2011CB808401 and 2011CB921702), the National Key Scientific Instrument and Equipment Development Project of China (Grant No. 2013YQ1203451), the National Supercomputing Center in Tianjin, China,

Abstract

Adsorption behavior of Fe atoms on a metal-free naphthalocyanine (H2Nc) monolayer on Ag(111) surface at room temperature has been investigated using scanning tunneling microscopy combined with density functional theory (DFT) based calculations. We found that the Fe atoms were adsorbed on the centers of H2Nc molecules and formed Fe–H2Nc complexes at low coverage. DFT calculations show that Fe sited in the center of the molecule is the most stable configuration, in good agreement with the experimental observations. After an Fe–H2Nc complex monolayer was formed, the extra Fe atoms self-assembled to Fe clusters of uniform size and adsorbed dispersively at the interstitial positions of Fe–H2Nc complex monolayer. Therefore, the H2Nc monolayer grown on Ag(111) could be a good template to grow dispersed magnetic metal atoms and clusters at room temperature for further investigation of their magnetism-related properties.