The formation of metallic nanostructures on foreign metal and semiconductor surfaces plays an important role in modern nanoelectrochemistry. The usual formations procedure is carried out at solid/vacuum interfaces under UHV conditions. However, electrochemical nanostructuring at solid/liquid interfaces has great advantages in this field because local supersaturation or undersaturation can be precisely adjusted and rapidly changed via the electrode potential. Super and undersaturation determine the number of metal atoms in the critical nuclei and growth mode of the following electrochemical growth process.

In this work, we consider the energetic behavior of low-dimensional metallic nanostructures involving the adsorption of single atoms.

Results obtained using Monte Carlo simulated annealing are employed to check some theoretical methods. We propose a formulation for the binding energy per bond in terms of the binding energy of the bulk materials involved.