Abstract
Large organic molecules are of important interest for organic-based devices such as hybrid photovoltaics or molecular electronics. Knowing their adsorption geometries and electronic structures allows to design and predict macroscopic device properties. Fundamental investigations in ultra-high vacuum (UHV) are thus mandatory to analyze and engineer processes in this prospects. With increasing size, complexity or chemical reactivity, depositing molecules by thermal evaporation becomes challenging. A recent way to deposit molecules in clean conditions is Electrospray Ionization (ESI). ESI keeps the possibility to work with large molecules, to introduce them in vacuum, and to deposit them on a large variety of surfaces. Here, ESI has been successfully applied to deposit triply fused porphyrin molecules on an insulating KBr(001) surface in UHV environment. Different deposition coverages have been obtained and characterization of the surface by in-situ atomic force microscopy working in the non-contact mode shows details of the molecular structures adsorbed on the surface. We show that UHV-ESI, can be performed on insulating surfaces in the sub-monolayer regime and to single molecules which opens the possibility to study a variety of complex molecules.
Highlights
Large complex molecules with tunable electronic properties are building block candidates for functional materials with special electrochemical and photophysical properties, which are of fundamental interest for many applications such as hybridphotovoltaic [1] or molecular electronics [2]
We show that ultra-high vacuum (UHV)-Electrospray Ionization (ESI), can be performed on insulating surfaces in the submonolayer regime and to single molecules which opens the possibility to study a variety of complex molecules
To confirm that residual solvent molecules introduced with the UHV-ESI process will not interfere with adsorbed molecules on the surface, we performed a deposition of the solvent solution only, i.e., toluene/isopropanol in the ratio 2:1 on a clean KBr(001) surface
Summary
Large complex molecules with tunable electronic properties are building block candidates for functional materials with special electrochemical and photophysical properties, which are of fundamental interest for many applications such as hybridphotovoltaic [1] or molecular electronics [2]. ESI has been successfully applied to deposit triply fused porphyrin molecules on an insulating KBr(001) surface in UHV environment. We show that UHV-ESI, can be performed on insulating surfaces in the submonolayer regime and to single molecules which opens the possibility to study a variety of complex molecules.
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