adatom

plural adatoms

1. materials scienceAn atom that lies on a crystal surface

   We studied silicon adatoms on the Si(100) surface.

   2 more examples

   An approach to help correct this involves an adcluster, consisting of an adatom (molecule) and cluster, which is "dipped" into the electron "background" of the substrate [24,25].

   1999, Thomas F George, Daniel A Jelski, Computational Studies Of New Materials, page 339

   Otherwise, in the case of pure physisorption, adatoms and very small adclusters would not be observed with the STM because the probability for the sharp eigenstates of the adparticles to lie within the 10 meV energy window ( given by the bias voltage ) would be considerably small.

   1987, PDMS and Clusters, page 125