Abstract
Self-assembled monolayers (SAM) and multilayers of organic materials have been intensely studied in the past years, due to their numerous potential applications as, for example, lubricants, corrosioninhibitors and/or adhesion-promoters [1,2]. Due to the reduced height of SAM, typically a couple of nanometers, the various Scanning Probe Microscopy (SPM) techniques, especially Scanning Tunneling Microscopy (STM) and Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM), have been the tools of choice in the morphological and structural study of those systems [1,2]. However, these SPM techniques have some limitations. One of them is the reduced scanning area, preventing the assessment of SAM coverage in large substrate areas, which is one of the key issues in studies of the potential applicability of SAM. Furthermore, due to their imaging principle, the SPM techniques are not suited to analyze SAM on substrates where the roughness is of the order of hundreds of nanometers or higher, impeding their application on most non-ideal (atomically flat) substrates.
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