Growth of a collapsing Langmuir monolayer

Langmuir monolayers of stearic acid on Co ions in the aqueous subphase have been deposited at different stages of constant pressure collapse, on hydrophilic Si(001) using a modified version of the inverse Langmuir-Schaefer method of horizontal deposition. The electron density profiles (EDPs) along the depth of the deposited films, extracted from the x-ray reflectivity data, show that a monolayer to bi-molecular layer transformation takes place after collapse. The molecules in the lower monolayer have asymmetric configurations with head groups touching water and tails in air, whereas molecules in the upper layer are in symmetric configurations with tails on both sides of the heads. Atomic force microscopy images of the deposited films after collapse, however, show nearly circular islands of height more than that of the bimolecular layer observed in the EDP. As pressure increases, ridges are seen to coexist with these islands. Although the coverage of such islands and ridges is low, they play an important role in determining the growth mode. The growth of the wetting and island layers, taken together, has a striking similarity with the Stranski-Krastanow mode, observed usually for heteroepitaxial growth.