Ordered Self-Assembly and Electronic Behavior of C_(60)-AnthrylphenylacetyIene Hybrid

摘要

The fullerene (C_(60)) molecule has very unique and attractive electronic, optical, and mechanical properties owing to its chemical properties and uniform, spherical, and nanoscale physical structure. Recent studies revealed that thin films made of C_(60) exhibit a wide range of interesting characteristics such as charge transport, photoconductivity, superconductivity (upon doping with alkali metals), and biological activities. The development of new Cffl-based thin-film materials relies strongly on the development of novel synthetic and processing methodologies to modify C_(60). Such methodologies include tailoring functional groups on C_(60) derivatives and covalently attaching fullerenes to solid-state supports to obtain a desirable optical or electronic response. Among many techniques explored, self-assembling C_(60)-based molecules on flat solid substrates has been found to be a good way to make thin films that also allow investigation of their physical properties, because self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) formed by chemisorption yield well-defined structures on substrates. In the literature, there are many reports on attempts to construct SAMs of C60 to produce highly ordered and densely packed structures on substrates, and there has been some success in this respect especially the recently observed noncovalently bonded C_(60) at very low temperatures (5 K). In a previous work related to the development of stable and ordered assemblies of conjugated molecular structures, we reported the self-assembly of (4-mercaptophenyl)anthrylacetylene (MPAA) on the surface of Au(111).