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Updated: Jul 5, 2025

Methods of Ex Situ and In Situ Investigations of Structural Transformations: The Case of Crystallization of Metallic Glasses
Published on: June 7, 2018
Phase Coexistence of Mn Trimer Clusters and Antiferromagnetic Mn Islands on Ir(111)
Arturo Rodríguez-Sota1, Vishesh Saxena1, Jonas Spethmann1
1Institute for Nanostructure and Solid State Physics, University of Hamburg, Hamburg 20355, Germany.
Abstract:
Clusters supported by solid substrates are prime candidates for heterogeneous catalysis and can be prepared in various ways. While mass-selected soft-landing methods are often used for the generation of monodisperse particles, self-assembly typically leads to a range of different cluster sizes. Here we show by scanning tunneling microscopy measurements that in the initial stages of growth, Mn forms trimers on a close-packed hexagonal Ir surface, providing a route for self-organized monodisperse cluster formation on an isotropic metallic surface. For an increasing amount of Mn, first a phase with reconstructed monolayer islands is formed, until at full coverage a pseudomorphic Mn phase evolves, which is the most densely packed one of the three different observed Mn phases on Ir(111). The magnetic state of both the reconstructed islands and the pseudomorphic film is found to be the prototypical antiferromagnetic Néel state with a 120° spin rotation between all nearest neighbors in the hexagonal layer.
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