Soft- and reactive landing of mass-selected ions is gaining attention as a promising approach for the precisely-controlled preparation of materials on surfaces that are not amenable to deposition using conventional methods. A broad range of ionization sources and mass filters are available that make ion soft-landing a versatile tool for surface modification using beams of hyperthermal (<100 eV) ions. The ability to select the mass-to-charge ratio of the ion, its kinetic energy and charge state, along with precise control of the size, shape, and position of the ion beam on the deposition target distinguishes ion soft landing from other surface modification techniques. Soft- and reactive landing have been used to prepare interfaces for practical applications as well as precisely-defined model surfaces for fundamental investigations in chemistry, physics, and materials science. For instance, soft- and reactive landing have been applied to study the surface chemistry of ions isolated in the gas-phase, prepare arrays of proteins for high-throughput biological screening, produce novel carbon-based and polymer materials, enrich the secondary structure of peptides and the chirality of organic molecules, immobilize electrochemically-active proteins and organometallics on electrodes, create thin films of complex molecules, and immobilize catalytically active organometallics as well as ligated metal clusters. In addition, soft landing has enabled investigation of the size-dependent behavior of bare metal clusters in the critical subnanometer size regime where chemical and physical properties do not scale predictably with size. The morphology, aggregation, and immobilization of larger bare metal nanoparticles, which are directly relevant to the design of catalysts as well as improved memory and electronic devices, have also been studied using ion soft landing. This review article begins in section 1 with a brief introduction to the existing applications of ion soft- and reactive landing. Section 2 provides an overview of the ionization sources and mass filters that have been used to date for soft landing of mass-selected ions. A discussion of the competing processes that occur during ion deposition as well as the types of ions and surfaces that have been investigated follows in section 3. Section 4 discusses the physical phenomena that occur during and after ion soft landing, including retention and reduction of ionic charge along with factors that impact the efficiency of ion deposition. The influence of soft landing on the secondary structure and biological activity of complex ions is addressed in section 5. Lastly, an overview of the structure and mobility as well as the catalytic, optical, magnetic, and redox properties of bare ionic clusters and nanoparticles deposited onto surfaces is presented in section 6. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Mass Spec Rev. 00:1–41, 2015

Soft- and reactive landing of ions onto surfaces: Concepts and applications

Sonocatalytic degradation of Acid Blue 92 using sonochemically prepared samarium doped zinc oxide nanostructures

Sputter deposition of titanium monoxide and dioxide thin films with controlled properties using optical emission spectroscopy

XPS characterization of SmNbO4 and SmTaO4 precursors prepared by sol-gel method

Preparation of Bi2S3 thin films with a nanoleaf structure by electrodeposition method

Thermo-coloration of SmS thin flims by XPS in situ observation

Fabrication and characterization of metal and semiconductor SmS thin films by rf/dc dual magnetron sputtering

We have succeeded to fabricate the thin film mainly or entirely consisting of nano-crystallites TiO on a substrate at room temperature by using the magnetron sputtering combined with the gas aggregation method which has the capability to deposit grown small particles and/or clusters of the desired compound material on the substrate in soft-landed mode. The important experimental parameters to control the growth of TiO particles are identified as partial pressure of additional oxygen gas, growth-reaction distance Ltd, and LN2 cooling of growth chamber. The smallest averaged diameter of TiO nano-particles is 5.62 nm and size distribution being from 2 to 8 nm under 50 mm of Ltd. The compositional uniformity is confirmed by EDS and EELS. The chemical state of the film observed by Ti 2P XPS peak confirms the primarily growth of TiO and indicates the formation of minor content of amorphous Ti1-xOx and/or Ti1-xCx particularly at the surface of the film.

S. Koide

Papers

Thermo-coloration of SmS thin flims by XPS in situ observation

Fabrication and characterization of metal and semiconductor SmS thin films by rf/dc dual magnetron sputtering

Fabrication and structural characterization of TiO nanoparticle soft-landed on substrate by the magnetron sputtering-gas aggregation method

Optical properties of metal and semiconductor SmS thin films fabricated by rf/dc dual magnetron sputtering