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Investigation of mercury adsorption on gold films by STM
Author(s) -
George M. A.,
Glaunsinger W. S.,
Thundat T.,
Lindsay S. M.
Publication year - 1988
Publication title -
journal of microscopy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.569
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1365-2818
pISSN - 0022-2720
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2818.1988.tb01441.x
Subject(s) - mercury (programming language) , adsorption , monolayer , resistive touchscreen , materials science , scanning tunneling microscope , quantum tunnelling , analytical chemistry (journal) , chemistry , nanotechnology , optoelectronics , environmental chemistry , engineering , computer science , electrical engineering , programming language
SUMMARY Scanning tunnelling microscopy, combined with complementary electrical and analytical measurements, provides a powerful method for examining the behaviour of mercury on gold‐film sensors under actual sensor operating conditions. The films exhibit a linear increase in resistance upon adsorption of mercury, and this resistive change is accompanied by a decrease in measured barrier height at submonolayer coverages of mercury. STM studies of changes in the effective barrier height upon mercury adsorption provide evidence that mercury migrates to grain boundaries for films exposed at submonolayer coverages. Coverages in excess of a monolayer result in a nearly constant, reduced effective barrier height across the entire surface, which is indicative of a more uniform distribution of mercury over the surface. This behaviour is interpreted in terms of the adsorption of mercury onto defective, contaminated gold surfaces.