Motion of clusters on complex surfaces

Polymer and organic molecule assemblies have been investigated intensely in the past decade, due to their vast range of applications in nano-molecular electronics and as bio-sensors. In particular, self-assembled monolyers (SAMs) of alkanethiol on the Au(111) surface are used widely in surface studies because they are simple structurally, stable thermodynamically and have well-defined order. In this project, inspired by recent experiments, we use classical molecular dynamics simulations to study motions of Ag$_{n}$ clusters with various sizes on the alkanthiol SAMs. We report detailed results on dynamics, diffusion, and sintering processes of these nano-clusters.