Structure and properties of discontinuous metal films

Abstract

The term ‘discontinuous film’ covers a large domain in thin film physics between nucleation and total coalescence, which corresponds to a continuous film. Discontinuous films grown on insulator substrates very often exhibit unusual physical and chemical properties. They have therefore attracted a great deal of interest and found many applications in the last twenty years. In particular, small particles have received considerable attention with a view to understanding the origin and the mechanisms of some specific behaviour. In this paper, the author reports some of these properties and tries to correlate them with the structure of the films.