Structure assembly regularities in vapour-deposited gold–fullerene mixture films

Abstract

Self-assembly is an attractive phenomenon that, with proper handling, can enable the production of sophisticated hybrid nanostructures with sub-nm-scale precision. The importance of this phenomenon is particularly notable in the fabrication of metal–organic nanomaterials as promising substances for spintronic devices. The exploitation of self-assembly in nanofabrication requires a comprehension of atomic processes creating hybrid nanostructures. Here, we focus on the self-assembly processes in the vapour-deposited Au_xC₆₀ mixture films, revealing the exciting quantum plasmon effects. Through a systematic characterization of the Au_xC₆₀ films carried out using structure-sensitive techniques, we have established correlations between the film nanostructure and the Au concentration, x. The analysis of these correlations designates the Au intercalation into the C₆₀ lattice and the Au clustering as the basic processes of the nanostructure self-assembly in the mixture films, the efficiency of which strongly depends on x. The evaluation of this dependence for the Au_xC₆₀ composite nanostructures formed in a certain composition interval allows us to control the size of the Au clusters and the intercluster spacing by adjusting the Au concentration only. This study represents the self-assembled Au_xC₆₀ mixtures as quantum materials with electronic functions tuneable by the Au concentration in the depositing mixture.