Electron Microscopy Reveals Structure and Morphology of One Molecule Thin Organic Films

01/05/2012

Electron Microscopy Reveals Structure and Morphology of One Molecule Thin Organic Films

By: Omar Gómez Rojas ID:139236

Transmission electron microscopy was used to determine the structure of molecular films of self-assembled monolayers of pentathiophene derivatives supported on various electron transparent substrates. Despite the extreme beam sensitivity of the monolayers, structural crystallographic maps were obtained that revealed the nanoscale structure of the film. The image resolution is determined by the minimum beam diameter that the radiation hardness of the monolayer can support, which in our case is about 90 nm for a beam current of 5 × 106 e–/s. Electron diffraction patterns were collected while scanning a parallel electron beam over the film. These maps contain uncompromised information of the size, symmetry and orientation of the unit cell, orientation and structure of the domains, degree of crystallinity, and their variation on the micrometer scale, which are crucial to understand the electrical transport properties of the organic films. This information allowed us to track small changes in the unit cell size driven by the chemical modification of the support film.

Full article in the next link:

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/nl203776n

Electron Microscopy Reveals Structure and Morphology of One Molecule Thin Organic Films

Virginia Altoe, Florent Martin, Allard Katan, Miquel Salmeron, Shaul Aloni.

Nano Lett., 2012, 12 (3), pp 1295–1299

DOI: 10.1021/nl203776n