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Updated: May 22, 2026

Orientational Transition in a Liquid Crystal Triggered by the Thermodynamic Growth of Interfacial Wetting Sheets
Published on: May 15, 2017
Different interface orientations of pentacene and PTCDA induce different degrees of disorder
Angela Poschlad1, Velimir Meded, Robert Maul
1Institute for Nanotechnology, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Karlsruhe, 76131, Germany. wolfgang.wenzel@kit.edu.
Abstract:
: Organic polymers or crystals are commonly used in manufacturing of today's electronically functional devices (OLEDs, organic solar cells, etc). Understanding their morphology in general and at the interface in particular is of paramount importance. Proper knowledge of molecular orientation at interfaces is essential for predicting optoelectronic properties such as exciton diffusion length, charge carrier mobility, and molecular quadrupole moments. Two promising candidates are pentacene and 3,4:9,10-perylenetetracarboxylic dianhydride (PTCDA). Different orientations of pentacene on PTCDA have been investigated using an atomistic molecular dynamics approach. Here, we show that the degree of disorder at the interface depends largely on the crystal orientation and that more ordered interfaces generally suffer from large vacancy formation.
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