Self-Organized Molecular Films With Long-Range Quasiperiodic Order

  • 03
  • Apr
  • 2014

Vincent Fournée†*, Émilie Gaudry, Julian Ledieu, Marie-Cécile de Weerd, Dongmei Wu, Thomas Lograsso

 

 

Institut Jean Lamour, UMR 7198 CNRS-Université de Lorraine, Parc de Saurupt, 54042 Nancy Cedex, France.

The Ames Laboratory, Iowa State University, Ames IA 50011, USA.

* vincent.fournee@univ-lorraine.fr

DOI link: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/nn500234j

Self-organized molecular films with long-range quasiperiodic order have been successfully grown by using the complex potential energy landscape of quasicrystalline surfaces as templates. The long-range order arises from a specific subset of quasilattice sites acting as preferred adsorption sites for the molecules, thus enforcing a quasiperiodic structure in the film. These adsorption sites exhibit a local five-fold symmetry resulting from the cut by the surface plane through the cluster units identified in the bulk solid. Symmetry matching between the C60 fullerene and the substrate leads to a preferred adsorption configuration of the molecules with a pentagonal face down, a feature unique to quasicrystalline surfaces, enabling efficient chemical bonding at the molecule-substrate interface. This finding offers new opportunities to investigate the physical properties of model 2D quasiperiodic systems as the molecules can be functionalized to yield architectures with tailor-made properties.