Reactivity of Self-Assembled Monolayers: Local Surface Environment Determines Monolayer Erosion Rates

Abstract

We use scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) to study octanethiol self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) on Au(111) exposed to atomic hydrogen. While the overall net reaction is to remove octanethiol molecules from the underlying gold surface, the monolayer structure heavily influences the rate of this reaction and molecules located along surface defects are preferentially removed before those located in close-packed areas. Octanethiol molecules remaining on the gold surface can go through significant rearrangement: domain boundaries can change both size and structure, annealing into surrounding close-packed domains; film defects diffuse to the edge of close-packed areas; and molecules located along the edge of close-packed domains shift position, changing the size and shape of the remaining close-packed features. Monolayer reactivity increases with increasing hydrogen-atom exposure, and we compare the experimental results with kinetic Monte Carlo simulations. We find that the edges of defect sites are potentiall...