Deposition and STM characterization of luminescent organic molecules on metal substrates

Abstract

The porphyrin-based molecules including H 2TBPP, ZnTBPP and P tTBPP as well as the perinone derivatives (PD) molecules were deposited on Au(100), Au(111) and Cu(100) substrates in the form of single molecule, molecular line, submonolayer, monolayer and multilayer. The features of the performed molecular nanostructures were characterized by an ultrahigh vacuum scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) at room temperature. The observed molecular topographies matched very well with the molecule structures in spite of the fact that the molecular adsorption states were influenced by different metal surface. STM-induced photon emission was generated from the surface of H 2TBPP multilayer structures on Au(100) in tunneling junction when the applied bias exceeds the “turn-on” voltages ∼− 1.6 V or + 1.3 V at 0.5 nA.