Nanomanipulation of Metallic Clusters on Insulating Substrates

纳米团簇由于其广泛的应用和研究不同科学领域的灵活性，已成为纳米尺度研究的焦点系统。通过控制纳米团簇所包含的原子数量来调整其性质的能力仍然是一个强大的研究工具，但最近已经与通过吸附到表面来改变纳米团簇的物理性质的能力结合在一起。吸附金属纳米团簇由于其在纳米催化中的作用而引起了人们的极大兴趣，但它们也是研究纳米结构中电子传输现象的典型系统。在所有这些应用中，一个关键的目标是控制纳米团簇在表面上的位置，通过操纵直接移动纳米团簇是一个显而易见的方法。例如，可以使用操纵来形成所选择的结构，例如充当金属纳米线的金属纳米团簇的有序阵列，其传输特性由团簇大小和团簇密度控制。此外，了解不同表面上团簇的操纵将告诉我们如何利用底物-团簇相互作用来调节化学反应活性。在NOMCIS中，我们将使用扫描探针显微镜(SPM)操作来研究吸附在表面上的纳米团簇的横向迁移率和耗散随纳米团簇大小和电荷、环境环境、温度、吸附位置和表面材料的函数。NOMCIS项目汇集了一个完全多学科的联盟；包括专门从事物理和化学的小组，理论和实验的贡献是互补的。

Nanoclusters have become a focal system in nanoscale research due to their far-reaching applications and flexibility for studying different areas of science. The ability to tune the properties of the nanoclusters by controlling the number of atoms they contain remains a powerful investigative tool , but this has been recently coupled with the ability to modify the nanocluster’s physical properties via adsorption to a surface. Adsorbed metallic nanoclusters have attracted a lot of interest due to their role in nanocatalysis , but they also represent prototypical systems for the study of electron transport phenomena in nanostructures . In all these applications, a key objective is to control the position of the nanoclusters on the surface and directly moving nanoclusters via manipulation is an obvious approach. For example, manipulation can be used to form structures of choice, such as ordered arrays of metallic nanoclusters acting as metallic nanowires, with their transport properties controlled by the cluster size and the cluster density. Also, understanding the manipulation of clusters on different surfaces will tell us how the substrate-cluster interaction can be used to tune chemical reactivity. In NOMCIS we will use Scanning Probe Microscopy (SPM) manipulation to study the lateral mobility and dissipation of nanoclusters adsorbed on surfaces as a function of nanocluster size and charge, ambient environment, temperature, adsorption site and surface material. The NOMCIS project brings together a fully multidisciplinary consortium; including groups specialized in physics and chemistry, with a complementary contribution from theory and experiment.