Atomic force microscopy and in situ-annealing X-ray diffraction study on template-stripped gold substrates for optimum self-assembled monolayer deposition

Literature is well supplied with studies of gold deposit on mica for fabricating ultra-flat template-stripped surface. Gold silicon has not received much attention. Our study optimizes the deposition rates, annealing temperatures and time to obtain a surface very low roughness large (111) oriented crystallites. Atomic force microscopy performed in tapping peak mode evaluate roughness. The crystallite size obtained from situ X-ray diffraction measurements during annealing. We find out that rate 0.2 nm/s 40 min at 400°C gives best result (0.21±0.04) nm.