Electron transfer processes on Au nanoclusters supported on graphite

Jie Shen,Kirill Bobrov,Juanjuan Jia,Laurent Guillemot,Vladimir A Esaulov

doi:10.1007/s13404-013-0109-6

Abstract

Electron transfer processes play an important role in surface chemistry. This paper presents results of a study of changes in resonant electron transfer processes, as a function of gold cluster sizes, on the example of electron transfer between Li+ ions scattered on Au clusters on highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG). The gold nanoclusters were grown on lightly sputtered HOPG surface in order to obtain a wide coverage distribution of clusters. The growth of clusters was monitored by scanning tunneling microscopy. We found that electron transfer is much more probable on small clusters, whose lateral size is of the order of 2 to 3 nm and height in the 1-nm range, than on bulk Au or thin Au films. A comparison with Au clusters grown on the semiconducting titania did not reveal significant differences with HOPG.

Highlights

Supported metal nanoparticles have attracted much attention because of their use in many fields such as heterogeneous catalysis, microelectronics, photonics, etc
We investigated [14] how electron transfer processes are affected as a function of growth of clusters on the example of neutralization of Li+ ions on Au clusters grown on TiO2
We extend this work to the case of Au clusters grown on highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) to investigate in particular if any strong changes would be observed when going from the semiconducting TiO2 to the conducting graphite

Summary

Introduction

Supported metal nanoparticles have attracted much attention because of their use in many fields such as heterogeneous catalysis, microelectronics, photonics, etc. Our objective is to obtain this information in experiments that involve atom or ion beam scattering in which the energy and charge state of particles are monitored. We focused on this aspect in the interaction of ions with clusters, since information on electron transfer processes can be directly obtained.

Objectives

Results

Conclusion