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Scanning tunneling microscopy of template-stripped Au surfaces and highly ordered self-assembled monolayers
Sangyeob Lee1, Sung-Soo Bae, Gilberto Medeiros-Ribeiro
1Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, University of California, Irvine, California 92697, USA.
Abstract:
Template stripping of Au films in ultrahigh vacuum (UHV) produces atomically flat and pristine surfaces that serve as substrates for highly ordered self-assembled monolayer (SAM) formation. Atomic resolution scanning tunneling microscopy of template-stripped (TS) Au stripped in UHV confirms that the stripping process produces a flat, predominantly 111 textured, atomically clean surface. Octanethiol SAMs vapor deposited in situ onto UHV TS Au show a c(4 x 2) superlattice with (square root 3 x square root 3) R30 degrees basic molecular structure having an ordered domain size up to 100 nm wide. These UHV results validate the TS Au surface as a simple, clean and high-quality surface preparation method for SAMs deposited from both vapor phase and solution phase.
