EUROCORES_SONS 2. Call_Self organized metal clusters on stepped oxide films

The collaborative project "Self-Assembled Nanoscale Magnetic Networks" aims at exploiting self-assembly processes for creating and developing bottom-up architectures of planar magnetic networks constituted by sub- nanometer size functional elements. Elemental and alloyed nanomagnets of controlled size organized into regular patterns offer new perspectives for exciting developments in the timely fields of nanoelectronics, spintronics, and quantum computation. The proposed collaborative project will develop self-assembly strategies to design nanomagnetic networks by controlling the specific properties of individual atomic-scale magnets, their mutual interactions, and coupling with the environment. The project will employ coordinated theoretical, microscopy, magnetometry, and spectroscopy methods to achieve an in-depth understanding of the synthesis, structural, electronic and magnetic properties of novel nanoscale magnetic systems. The ultimate density limit with which information can be magnetically stored will be investigated combining material science input with self-assembly methods. Finally, novel material strategies will be implemented to obtain quantum magnetic systems that interact weakly with the supporting substrate in order to take on the fabrication of nanoscale, solid-state qubit ensembles. Aims and objectives of the Individual Project contribution to the CRP: The aim of this project is to find a way to grow thin films of aluminia on A1Ni(110) without domain boundaries. The idea is to use a vicinal surface of A1Ni(110) with a terrace width that is a integer multiple of the size of the alumina unit cell and with the step direction deviating by approximately 10 to 20 from the [001] direction. In that case it can be expected that the intrinsic stress in the film caused by the lattice mismatch can be relaxed without forming domain boundaries. As a result a stepped alumina film without domain walls should in principal be producible and the metallic cluster deposited on such a surface should be arranged along the steps, forming clusters with long range ordering and/or nanowires. We plan to deposit pure Fe and Co ass well as to co-deposit Pt - Fe and Pt-Co to form well ordered magnetic nanostructures. If the experiments on alumina run smoothly and enough time remains, we also plan to study hexagonal boron nitride layers as a template for producing self-ordered metallic structures. Such a layer grown on Rh (111) has been reported in literature recently and seems to be a perfect nanomesh (the lattice constant is 3 nm with 2 nm wide holes) which should be useful as a template for growing self ordered nanostructures.