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Visualization of molecular packing and tilting domains and interface effects in tetracene thin films on H/Si(001) (Phys. Status Solidi B 7/2017)
Author(s) -
Tersigni Andrew,
Sadowski Jerzy T.,
Qin XiaoRong
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
physica status solidi (b)
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.51
H-Index - 109
eISSN - 1521-3951
pISSN - 0370-1972
DOI - 10.1002/pssb.201770236
Subject(s) - tetracene , materials science , thin film , atomic force microscopy , anisotropy , substrate (aquarium) , chemical physics , lattice (music) , crystallography , condensed matter physics , nanotechnology , chemistry , molecule , optics , physics , oceanography , organic chemistry , geology , acoustics
Visualizing molecular crystalline domains and influence of substrate defects are important in understanding the charge transport in organic thin‐film devices. As a prototypical system, vacuum evaporated tetracene films of four molecular layers on hydrogen‐terminated Si(001)‐2 × 1 substrate have been studied by Tersigni et al. (article no. 1600777 ). The three microscopic images on the cover page present the same film surface location with atomic force microscopy (AFM), transverse shear microscopy (TSM), and friction force microscopy (FFM), respectively; clearly different structural information contents are revealed. What can be retrieved from these measurements includes two differently oriented in‐plane molecular packing domains due to the substrate lattice symmetry; and two types of subdomain inside each packing domain reflecting molecular tilting orderings and the influence by the substrate atomic steps. TSM evidently shows a sensitivity to probe vertical molecule‐tilt anisotropy for the materials, in addition to its known ability to map the lateral lattice orientations.