Epitaxial growth and domain coalescence of sexithiophene induced by the steps on cleaved KBr(0 0 1)

Abstract

Epitaxial growth of sexithiophene (6 T) thin films was achieved on KBr (0 0 1) under the optimum condition. Atomic force microscopy revealed that the initially formed in-plane orientation was caused by adsorption of 6 T molecules to the native steps on KBr and it helped formation of single-crystalline domains larger than 30×30 μm 2. The use of substrate steps as an epitaxial template shows the possibility to create high quality 6 T films with potentially large carrier mobility.