Anant Mathur | Akateeminen Kirjakauppa

There is much interest today in novel nanostructured
materials. For instance Pt-plated nanoporous gold
(NPG), a catalytic heterostructure with an ultrathin
(5 nm) film of Pt grown on the nanoscopically curved
and rough surfaces of NPG, is a promising catalyst
for fuel-cell applications. But unlike film growth
on planar surfaces, epitaxial growth on
nanoscopically non-planar surfaces is not well
understood. Indeed, nanoscale effects are expected
to cause non-planar epitaxial growth to deviate
substantially from classical thin-film growth. As
epitaxially layered nanostructures gain industrial
applications, these deviations in film growth become
important to consider. This book presents an
introduction to thin-film growth mechanics, followed
by a review of the Pt-on-Au system. The thermodynamic
effects of high curvatures on film growth are
examined, and the impact of nanoscopic roughness on
growth is explored experimentally. Some novel growth
characteristics observed for the first time are
discussed, and an atomistic strain-energy mediated
model for 3d thin film growth is proposed. This model
may be applied to any lattice-mismatched epitaxial
system.