  Surface diffusion has an impact on the lateral resolution of nanostructures
in bottom-up atom nanofabrication. In this paper we study the effects of the
gallium atoms self-assembled on silicon surfaces (100) patterned with trenches
at different slopes. These particular substrate morphologies have been made to
enable an effective deposition rate variation along the surface. In this way we
experimentally mimic the effect of the atomic flux modulation created by
standing wave during an atom nanofabrication experiment. Even if we observe
self organization of gallium atoms on the surface, we conclude that the
nano-islands are not affected by surface diffusion processes and the effective
variation of the deposition rate per unit area is the dominant factor affecting
the growth differences along the surface. This result demonstrates that the
gallium atoms self-organization should not prevent the observation of a
periodic nano-patterning created by atom nano-fabrication techniques.
