Andreas Buchsbaum

Fabrication of a well-ordered nanohole array stable at room temperature.

We report on the fabrication of a new type of nanotemplate surface consisting of a hexagonally well-ordered array of one monolayer deep holes with a tunable size of about 4 nm (2) and a fixed spacing of 7 nm. The nanohole array fabrication is based on the strain-relief trigonal network formed in the 2 monolayer Ag on Pt(111) system. Removing about 0.1 ML of the Ag top layer of this surface structure, for example, by He- or Ar-ion sputtering, leads to the formation of nanoholes at specific domains of the trigonal network, which are stable at room temperature.

In-situ magnetic nano-patterning of Fe films grown on Cu(100)

Metastable paramagnetic face-centered cubic (fcc) Fe films grown on a Cu(100) single crystal at room temperature can be transformed to the ferromagnetic body-centered cubic (bcc) structure by ion irradiation. We have employed this technique to write small ferromagnetic patches by Ar+ irradiation through a gold coated SiN mask with regularly arranged 80-nm diameter holes, which was placed on top of the as-prepared fcc Fe films. Nanopatterning was performed on both 8-monolayer (ML) Fe films grown in ultrahigh vacuum as well as 22-ML films stabilized by dosing carbon monoxide during growth. The structural transformation of these nano-patterned films was investigated using scanning tunneling microscopy. In both 8 and 22-ML fcc Fe films, the bcc needles are found to protrude laterally out of the irradiated part of the sample, limiting the resolution of the technique to a few 10 nm. The magnetic transformation was confirmed by magnetic force microscopy.

Time-of-flight spectroscopy of the energy distribution of laser-ablated atoms and ions

The growth of ultrathin films, deposited by laser ablation, crucially depends on the energy of the ablated species. Therefore, a time-of-flight (TOF) spectrometer has been constructed and measurements have been carried out in order to determine the energy distribution of laser-ablated Fe and Pt atoms and ions in the plasma created by nanosecond pulses of a frequency-doubled neodymium doped yttrium aluminum garnet laser. The experiments have been performed in ultrahigh vacuum at relatively low laser power. For measuring the spectra of the neutrals, a cross-beam electron source for postionization and electric as well as magnetic fields for repelling the ions are employed. Nevertheless, measurements of neutral particles are restricted to low plasma densities due to electrostatic shielding within the plasma, leading to an inefficient deflection of charged particles by electrostatic and magnetic fields. Test measurements have been performed by utilizing the TOF spectrometer as a pressure gauge and also by chopping the electron beam, running the TOF spectrometer as a residual gas mass spectrometer. The spectra of the laser-ablated plasmas have shown plasma conditions with a Debye length of approximately 10(-4) m, densities of 10(15)-10(16) m(-3) and ion energies up to 150 eV. Neutral spectra have shown an unexpectedly low fraction of neutrals (10(-3)-10(-4)) and hyperthermal energies up to several 10 eV, possibly contributed by recombination of ions and electrons in the plasma. Even though gas spectra had demonstrated the expected sensitivity of the TOF spectrometer for low-energy neutrals, no thermally evaporated neutral atoms could be found.