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Historical Perspectives on Contemporary Physics

Evaluation of organic sub-monolayers by X-ray based measurements under gracing incident conditions

The structural investigations of model organic systems like pentacene in the monolayer regime is very important for fundamental understanding of the initial nucleation process together with the electronic performance of transistor devices. The fact that the transistor performance saturates after deposition of some monolayers of the active organic material motivates a basic investigation of the submonolayer and monolayer regime in more detail. In this paper a method for the evaluation of the island formation and the island growth within the first monolayer is introduced. The method is based on X-ray scattering under grazing incident condition by means of specular X-ray reflectivity and off-specular X-ray scattering. From the specular reflectivity the electron density can be obtained which is directly correlated with the coverage of a submonolayer. Within the presented experiment coverages ranging from 7% up to 97% could be identified and are in excellent agreement with atomic force microscope results. Lateral information on the islands is obtained by rocking curve and detector scan measurements under grazing incident condition. The observed correlation peaks are evaluated by using Distorted Wave Born approximation, whereby mean island sizes ranging from 300nm to 1.5µm and mean island separation of about 2µm could be determined for the various samples. The obtained results encourages the use of this type of investigation for in-situ growth experiments to obtain a better understanding of the first monolayer formation.

Evaluation of organic sub-monolayers by X-ray based measurements under gracing incident conditions, O. Werzer, B. Satdlober, A. Haase, H.-G. Flesch and R. Resel (2009), Eur. Phys. J. Appl. Phys., DOI 10.1051/epjap/2009038

Laser heating of thick layers through a backwards, self-sustained propagation of a steep, steady state thermal front

Presented paper reports on switching device based on reversible modulation of charge carrier mobility by photochromic additive distributed in polymer matrix. The light induced photochromic conversion of the additive is accompanied by significant increase of its dipole moment. The presence of the dipole moment induces change of electrostatic potential in its vicinity and shifts the site energies of individual polymer repeating units. Since the position and orientation of the photochromic additive with respect to the polymer chain are essentially random the effect results in broadening of the distribution of the transport states and consequently in the lowering of the charge carriers mobility. These notions suggested by quantum chemistry modeling are proved by experimental characterization of the optical and electrical switching properties of the suggested switch. The observed current-voltage characteristics showed reversible decrease of the currents after the photochromic switching of the additive to its metastable state with high dipole moment. This behaviour was explained on the basis of charge carrier mobility decrease due to the presence of charge traps. Impedance spectroscopy revealed a drop of the bulk conductivity when the polar state of the photochromic molecules was present. The induced conductivity decrease is proportional to the drop observed by current-voltage characterization.

Editors-in-Chief
M. Eckert and J.D. Wells
ISSN (Print Edition): 2102-6459
ISSN (Electronic Edition): 2102-6467

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