Formation of Monodispersed Films from Size-Selected Copper Nanoclusters

Deposition of size-selected metal nanoclusters on a substrate with very low kinetic energy helps to keep the clusters intact with respect to their shapes and sizes as compared to clusters in flight condition. Here we report formation of monodispersed films of size-selected copper nanoclusters (diameter -3 nm) that are produced in a magnetron based gas aggregation type source equipped with a quardrupole mass filter (QMF) to select sizes of clusters before landing. Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) study shows that the size-distributions of isolated islands peaks around the selected size of clusters and consequently the diffusion of these nano-scale islands is very low.