Impact of fluorination on interface energetics and growth of pentacene on Ag(111)

Qi Wang; Meng-Ting Chen; Antoni Franco-Cañellas; Bin Shen; Thomas Geiger; Holger F Bettinger; Frank Schreiber; Ingo Salzmann; Alexander Gerlach; Steffen Duhm

doi:10.3762/bjnano.11.120

Impact of fluorination on interface energetics and growth of pentacene on Ag(111)

Beilstein J Nanotechnol. 2020 Sep 8:11:1361-1370. doi: 10.3762/bjnano.11.120. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Institut für Angewandte Physik, Universität Tübingen, Auf der Morgenstelle 10, 72076 Tübingen, Germany.
² Institute of Functional Nano & Soft Materials (FUNSOM), Jiangsu Key Laboratory for Carbon-Based Functional Materials & Devices and Joint International Research Laboratory of Carbon-Based Functional Materials and Devices, Soochow University, Suzhou 215123, People's Republic of China.
³ Institut für Organische Chemie, Universität Tübingen, Auf der Morgenstelle 18, 72076 Tübingen, Germany.
⁴ Department of Physics, Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, Concordia University, 7141 Sherbrooke St. West, Montreal, Quebec H4B 1R6, Canada.

Abstract

We studied the structural and electronic properties of 2,3,9,10-tetrafluoropentacene (F4PEN) on Ag(111) via X-ray standing waves (XSW), low-energy electron diffraction (LEED) as well as ultraviolet and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (UPS and XPS). XSW revealed that the adsorption distances of F4PEN in (sub)monolayers on Ag(111) were 3.00 Å for carbon atoms and 3.05 Å for fluorine atoms. The F4PEN monolayer was essentially lying on Ag(111), and multilayers adopted π-stacking. Our study shed light not only on the F4PEN-Ag(111) interface but also on the fundamental adsorption behavior of fluorinated pentacene derivatives on metals in the context of interface energetics and growth mode.

Keywords: X-ray standing wave technique; decoupling; fluorination; metal–organic interfaces; organic pi-conjugated molecules.

Grants and funding

This work was financially supported in part by the National Key R&D Program of China (Grant No. 2017YFA0205002), the 111 Project of the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs, the Collaborative Innovation Center of Suzhou Nano Science & Technology (NANO-CIC) and the Soochow University-Western University Joint Center for Synchrotron Radiation Research. Q. W. gratefully acknowledges financial support from the China Scholarship Council (CSC No. 201706920041).