adparticle

Etymology

Revised spelling of ad particle popularized by Robert Gomer and Lynn W. Swanson's 1963 paper "Theory of field desorption", coined by chemists Roger Wortman, Robert Gomer, and Richard A. Lundy, in 1957 as a shortening of adsorption + particle.

noun

A cluster of atoms or molecules that is adsorbed onto the surface of a material.“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.”