Size effects in nucleation and growth processes from preformed soft-landed clusters

Nucleation and growth have been studied on a cluster scale for preformed antimony clusters soft landed on an amorphous carbon substrate. It is shown how incident cluster size is a good parameter in monitoring independently the average island size and island density at room temperature. By exploiting the decrease of cluster mobility as the cluster size increases, we observe that, superimposed to a narrowing of the supported island distribution, the average island size distribution shifts down, presents a minimum, and increases.