Forces that drive the self-assembly of metallic dots on semiconductor substrates

The scaling and ordering of metallic nanoclusters on semiconductor substrates has been explored computationally. Numerical techniques were implemented to calculate the total electrostatic and van der Waals energies for systems containing multiple disks. Observations show that interactions in charge clouds beneath the metallic disks led to an electrostatic repulsive force. Attraction was observed due to the van der Waals energy. An energy barrier exists for disk coalescence. This work suggests the potential of double layer charges in the development of large-scale nanodot systems that require precise control over both dot location and size.