The existence of structure progressions and wetting transitions in intermediately disordered monolayer alkyl chain assemblies

摘要

Partial monolayers of uniform length alkyl chains lsqb;CH3(CH2)nndash;;n=10ndash;21rsqb; bonded at constant coverage onto a disordered lattice of silanol groups on amorphous SiO2, exhibit a distinct change in surface wetting behavior for 14le;nle;17 which correlates closely with a significant shift in the average conformational ordering of the chains. These data provide definitive evidence for the existence of a family of surfacehyphen;constrained, intermediately ordered phases of discrete length, flexible chains and imply that broad classes of these families exist.