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O: Fachverband Oberflächenphysik

O 77: Poster Session VI: Scanning probe techniques: Method development I

O 77.5: Poster

Wednesday, March 3, 2021, 13:30–15:30, P

Charging single metal nanoparticles grown on thin alumina films by the AFM tip — Baptiste Chatelain, •Ali El Barraj, Clemence Badie, Lionel Santinacci, and Clemens Barth — Aix-Marseille University, CNRS, CINaM, 13288 Marseille, France

The characterization of charges inside a single metal island or nanoparticle (NP), which are supported on an insulating thin film, is of high interest in research fields like heterogeneous catalysis and microelectronics. The reason is that charges in a NP can have a large impact onto the NP*s catalytic activity and that they can interfere with the underlying insulating film, partially via defects of the film. Whereas the first aspect is certainly of importance in catalysis, the second phenomenon is of particular interest in micro-electronics because a detailed analysis of the charge-insulator interaction can explain phenomena that are related to leakage currents and device performance.

It has been already shown hat electrostatic force microscopy (EFM) and Kelvin probe force microscopyt (KPFM) are suitable techniques for charge manipulation experiments at nano-objects like NPs and that they can be used to monitor, in particular, the charge-insulator interaction. Here, we use KPFM to study injected charges inside PdNPs and AuNPs, which are grown on 15 to 80nm thin ALD grown aluminum oxide (alumina) films. We show that the alumina films have a high insulating character, which allows injecting charge into the surface or NP without loosing the charge into the film. Apart from the material specific results, we discuss the experimental procedures and related difficulties that may appear during charge manipulation experiments.