It was recalled that self-ordered growth of nano-arrays on strained metallic interfaces was attractive for preparing highly-ordered nanotemplates. The advantage of this natural templating approach was that symmetry, feature-sizes and density were predicted to depend upon the interfacial stress in the strained layers; which could be adjusted by changing the substrate/thin-film compositions, temperature and adlayer coverage. The bottom-up approach of growing nanostructured 2-dimensional ordered arrays of clusters on the misfit-dislocation networks of strained metallic thin films and surfaces required a detailed understanding of the nucleation and film/adsorbate interaction processes. It was shown here how high-resolution large-scale variable-temperature scanning tunnelling microscopy imaging could improve the understanding of the self-assembly processes.

Self-Organized Nanotemplating on Misfit Dislocation Networks Investigated by Scanning Tunneling Microscopy. B.Diaconescu, G.Nenchev, J.Jones, K.Pohl: Microscopy Research and Technique, 2007, 70[6], 547-53