RT Journal Article
T1 Sub-nanometer resolution of an organic semiconductor crystal surface using friction force microscopy in water
A1 Pimentel, Carlos
A1 Shinto, Varghese
A1 Seong-Jun, Yoon
A1 Soo Young, Park
A1 Johannes, Gierschner
A1 Enrico, Gnecco
A1 Pina Martínez, Carlos Manuel
AB Organic semiconductors (OSC) are attracting much interest for (opto)electronic applications, such as photovoltaics, LEDs, sensors or solid state lasers. In particular, crystals formed by small π-conjugated molecules have shown to be suitable for constructing OSC devices. However, the (opto)electronic properties are complex since they depend strongly on both the mutual orientation of molecules as well as the perfection of bulk crystal surfaces. Hence, there is an urgent need to control nano-topographic OSC features in real space. Here we show that friction force microscopy in water is a very suitable technique to image the free surface morphology of an OSC single crystal (TDDCS) with sub-nanometer resolution. We demonstrate the power of the method by direct correlation to the structural information extracted from combined single crystal (SC-) and specular (s-) XRD studies, which allows us to identify the pinning centers encountered in the stick-slip motion of the probing tip with the topmost methyl groups on the TDDCS surface.
PB Institute of Physics (Great Britain)
SN 0953-8984
YR 2016
FD 2016
LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/23546
UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/23546
LA eng
NO Unión Europea. FP7
NO Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO)
NO Comunidad de Madrid
DS Docta Complutense
RD 1 may 2024