Coarsening and pearling instabilities in silver nanofractal aggregates.

We investigate the morphological changes of 3D supported fractal aggregates generated through the deposition of silver clusters on graphite. The fractal relaxation, activated after their formation by perturbing them either by thermal annealing or by using a surfactant, as oxide molecules, carried by silver clusters in a subsequent deposition, shows evidence of two distinct fragmentation patterns. The post coarsening, driven by thermal heating, gives a broad asymmetrical distribution of fragments in agreement with a random process, whereas the entire silver fractal pearling fragmentation is driven by chemical adjunction of the surfactant.

Dynamics of polymorphic nanostructures: from growth to collapse.

The deposition of preformed clusters on surfaces offers new possibilities to build complex artificial nanostructures, the shape of which depends on the cluster size. We describe routes for generating unusual polymorphic nanoislands, which constitute unique platforms for exploring instabilities. As coverage increases, the constraints accumulated in such nanostructures induce spectacular flattening collapse processes, which are not observed when the constraints are imposed by the substrate.

Synthesis of silver molybdate clusters driven by laser-annealing.

The synthesis of silver rich molybdate clusters is achieved by laser induced chemical reaction of coadsorbed MoO(3) and O(2) molecules on free silver clusters. The reactants MoO(3) and/or O(2) molecules condensed at low temperature (77 K-175 K) on free silver clusters. Then, the silver clusters together with their adsorbed molecules are flashed either ionized with a discharge or ionized and heated by a laser. Then they are cooled down by evaporation. The synthesized chemical compounds are analyzed by a high-resolution time-of-flight mass spectrometer. If only one type of reactant is adsorbed on the cluster, only one oxide molecule is stabilized on the metallic core after the heating and cooling cycle. On the contrary, the coadsorption of the two types of molecules MoO(3) and O(2) on Ag(n) (+), at 77 K, leads to complex aggregates that transform, after laser heating, into a molybdate rich metal clusters. These synthesized species cool down by evaporating silver atoms showing evidence of a binary oxide that is more stable than the metallic core. Moreover we demonstrate that for small size molybdate clusters, a stoichiometric composition may differ from the bulk one.