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而成为纳米尺度研究的焦点。通过控制纳米团簇所含原子的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，这与通过表面吸附来改变纳米团簇物理性质的能力结合在一起。由于其在纳米催化中的作用，吸附金属纳米团簇引起了人们的极大兴趣，但它们也代表了纳米结构中电子传递现象研究的原型系统。在所有这些应用中，一个关键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种显而易见的方法。例如，操纵可以用来形成选择的结构，例如作为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，了解不同表面上簇的操作将告诉我们如何利用基质-簇的相互作用来调整化学反应性。在NOMCIS中，我们将使用扫描探针显微镜（SPM）操作来研究纳米团簇吸附在表面上的横向迁移率和耗散作为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合体；包括物理和化学的专业小组，理论和实验的补充贡献。

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.