Dipole-driven self-organization of zwitterionic molecules on alkali halide surfaces

• Laurent Nony,
• Franck Bocquet,
• Franck Para,
• Frédéric Chérioux,
• Eric Duverger,
• Frank Palmino,
• Vincent Luzet and
• Christian Loppacher

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2012, 3, 285–293, doi:10.3762/bjnano.3.32

• zwitterionic molecules on ionic-crystal (100) template surfaces. The crystals chosen (NaCl, KCl, RbCl, and KBr) all show the same structure (face-centered cubic, or rock salt) and thus provide an identical quadratic pattern of alternating electric charges on the surface, but with a different lattice constant

• software [22]. Results and Discussion The topography image of ≈0.2 ML MSPS deposited on a clean KCl substrate surface is depicted in Figure 2a. MSPS diffuses to step edges and impurities and forms disordered amorphous islands, but with a more or less uniform height, and no formation of larger clusters or

• to the island boundaries. With the annealing cycle, we also observe a rearrangement of the KCl substrate surface, which will be discussed at the end of this section. For the moment we would just like to mention that the diffusion of MSPS, with its strong electric dipole, on an ionic surface can

Molecular-resolution imaging of pentacene on KCl(001)

• Julia L. Neff,
• Jan Götzen,
• Enhui Li,
• Michael Marz and
• Regina Hoffmann-Vogel

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2012, 3, 186–191, doi:10.3762/bjnano.3.20

• National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), 1-2-1 Sengen, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan 10.3762/bjnano.3.20 Abstract The growth of pentacene on KCl(001) at submonolayer coverage was studied by dynamic scanning force microscopy. At coverages below one monolayer pentacene was found to arrange in islands with

• an upright configuration. The molecular arrangement was resolved in high-resolution images. In these images two different types of patterns were observed, which switch repeatedly. In addition, defects were found, such as a molecular vacancy and domain boundaries. Keywords: KCl; molecular growth

• of a functionalized tip [35]. In this work, we describe the arrangement of pentacene adsorbed on the KCl(001) single-crystal surface. For submonolayer coverage the molecules form islands with upright ordering. In molecularly resolved images of these islands two different molecular patterns are