The recent development of the atomic force microscope toward obtaining images from insulator surfaces opens the possibility of insulator cluster studies. Clusters from fundamentally and technologically important elements like silicon and carbon need to be studied for an understanding of many properties and processes concerning these materials in their various bulk crystalline configurations and surface structures. Clusters will be deposited on various crystalline substrates and the atomic arrangements will be imaged by atomic force microscopy (AFM). The AFM results should provide new information on the static and dynamic behavior of the clusters in addition to cluster-substrate interactions. Size- selected clusters will be deposited on single crystal supports in ultra-high-vacuum (UHV) using an ion-sputter generation source and a quadrupole mass separator. The substrates will be prepared by standard UHV surface preparation methods, namely ion sputtering, annealing, low-energy electron diffraction, and Auger analysis. Electronic velocity filtering deposition of the ionized cluster beam will ensure gentle deposition of the particles. Deposition on different types of substrates will show eventual changes in the cluster geometries and the substrate lattice upon adsorption. Advances in this field have implications for currently used industrial processes and fields like microelectronics, sensors, catalysis, coating technology, materials science, engineering of semiconductor materials, and heterostructures.
