High field microscopy of nickel on tungsten

Abstract

Field emission and field ion microscopy have been used to study the properties of nickel layers adsorbed on tungsten, and the growth of nickel crystallites. The first monolayer of nickel has a maximum density of 0.97 ± 0.05 × 10 19 atoms m −2 and results in an increase in the work function which can be attributed to the formation of dipoles of moment μ 0 = 1.70 ± 0.08 × 10 −30 C m at zero coverage and polarizability α = 7.3 ± 0.05 A ̊ 3 . Nickel desorbs from the tungsten surface with activation energy 4.22 ± 0.01 eV and second layer atoms desorb with activation energy 3.2 ± 0.02 eV. Surface diffusion of second and higher layers over clean tungsten layer is believed to proceed by the “unrolling carpet” mechanism, with activation energy 0.93 ± 0.03 eV in close agreement with measurements of surface self-diffusion of nickel. Nickel does not dissolve appreciably in single-crystal tungsten and we confirm that atomic disordering at the nickel-tungsten interface is confined within a few angstroms of the interface. Well-ordered crystallites can be grown from a central nuclear structure which develops on (110)W. Combination of field ion and field emission techniques indicate that the crystallites adopt the expected growth form, having surfaces comprising large low-index faces, and also serve to confirm that field emission images alone cannot be relied upon to give an indication of crystallite shape. Crystallites invariably form upon an adsorbed layer which is at least one atom thick but may be thicker depending upon conditions of growth. The growth of crystals in situ offers the possibility of generating well-ordered low-index planes of large area which are suitable for further study, but it has yet to be confirmed that they behave as surface planes of bulk nickel.