5-nm Au deposition. (c) Nucleation of wiggly Au nanostructure after annealing at 350°C. (d) Self-assembled Au droplets after annealing at 550°C. AFM side-view images of (a) to (d) are 1 × 1 μm2. The cross-sectional surface line profiles in (a-1) to (d-1) are acquired from the black lines in (a) to (d). Methods In this study, the self-assembled Au droplets were fabricated on GaAs (111)A, (111)B, (110), and (100) representing the general zinc blende lattice indices in a pulsed

laser deposition (PLD) system. To start with, various index samples were indium-bonded together on an Inconel holder side by side for uniformity per batch and then treated with a degassing process at 350°C for 30 min under 1 × 10−4 Torr. CT99021 Subsequently, a total amount of 2.5 nm of Au was equally deposited on the samples at a rate of 0.5 Å/s and at an ionization current of 3 mA under 1 × 10−1 Torr in an ion coater chamber. With the aim of investigating the detailed

evolution process of the self-assembled Au droplets, each growth was systematically carried out by varying the annealing temperatures (T a) at 100°C, 250°C, 300°C, 350°C, 400°C, 450°C, 500, and 550°C, respectively. For the systematic growths, the substrate temperature (T s) was ramped up to the target temperature at a ramp rate of 1.83°C/s under 1 × 10−4 Torr by a computer-operated recipe, and after FK506 nmr reaching each target, a dwell time of 450 s was equally given to the samples. After the termination of each growth, Aurora Kinase the T s was immediately quenched down to diminish the Ostwald ripening [30, 31]. Following the fabrication, AFM was used

for the characterization of surface morphologies, and XEI software was used for the data preparation and analysis of AFM top-view and side-view images and line profiles as well as the Fourier filter transform (FFT) power spectra. The FFT power spectrum represents the height information converted from the real spatial domain to the frequency domain, and thus, the horizontal (x) and vertical (y) information is converted by taking the reciprocal of the corresponding units of x and y from the AFM images; hence, the distribution of color patterns can present the distribution of frequent height with directionality. Results and discussion Figure 2 presents the nucleation of the self-assembled Au clusters and the wiggling nanostructures induced by the variation of annealing temperature (T a) between 250°C and 350°C on GaAs (111)A. The AFM top-view images of 1 × 1 μm2 are presented in Figure 2a,b,c,d along with the cross-sectional line profiles in Figure 2 (a-1) to (d-1), acquired from the white lines in Figure 2a,b,c,d. The insets in Figure 2 (a-2) to (d-2) show the FFT power spectra.