Metastable Monolayer Formation through a Connector Structure

The intentional growth of metastable surface structures of organic molecules adsorbed on inorganic substrates is a challenging task. It is usually unclear which kinetic mechanism leads to the metastable surface polymorph after a deposition experiment. In this work, we computationally investigate a growth procedure that allows to intentionally grow a defined metastable surface structure starting from thermodynamic equilibrium. This procedure is applicable to organic-inorganic interface systems that exhibit a thermodynamically stable connector structure that can be exploited to grow the metastable target structure. With specific temperature and pressure changes in the system, a significant yield of the target polymorph can be achieved. We demonstrate this procedure on a simplified microscopic interface system of rectangular molecules adsorbing on a square lattice substrate with kinetic Monte Carlo growth simulations.