The nucleation of Pt films grown by ion beam assisted deposition on Pt(111) has been studied by scanning tunneling microscopy. At temperatures T≥200 K, the simultaneous ion bombardment during vapor phase deposition leads to a substantial increase in the island number density caused by nucleation at ion impact induced adatom clusters. This increase is observed even in the higher temperature range where after ion bombardment alone the ion impact induced adatom clusters are no longer present.
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Esch et al. (1995) studied this question.