Self-organization during the growth of phase-separated nanostructured thin films

Control over the morphology and spatial correlations at the nanoscale is one of the major challenge of the nowadays nanoscience and nanotechnology. Bottom-up approaches to nanostructured material synthesis are based on self-organization processes to precisely define ordered nanostructures on a large scale. Self-organization occurs via the interplay between two factors - an external constraint acting on internal system processes. During the thin film growth this is translated into the interplay between thermodynamic driving forces and kinetic constraints. In this talk I will summarize the recent research activities of our group on the phase separation during the growth of carbontransition metal thin films. Different processes can be ’switched off/on’ by external control of the experimental parameters such as temperature, substrate type, matrix/dispersed phase chemical affinity or incoming particle energy. This results in a large variety of lateral or vertical composition modulations, such as encapsulated nanoparticles, high aspect ratio nanocolumns or self-organized layered 3D nanoparticle arrays. Such self-organization process is versatile as different carbontransition metal systems show this effect. The observed tendencies will be discussed on the basis of the interplay of thermal and energetic ion induced phenomena.