Overlayer growth and molecular structures of C84 and other large fullerenes: A scanning-tunneling-microscopy study

Geometric and Electronic Structure of Fullerene Film Growth as a Function of Coverage

We have employed scanning tunneling microscopy at room and low temperature, i.e. 300, 50, and 5 K, to study the epitaxy and growth of fullerene films on the noble-metal surfaces Ag(110) and Au(110). Initial island growth occurs on terrace sites away from substrate step edges. Particularly at low temperatures where the rotational and vibrational movements of the fullerene molecules are frozen in, different intra-molecular topographic patterns become visible in ordered films, which are characteristic of particular adsorption sites. Complementary tunneling spectroscopy and direct and inverse photoemission measurements reveal distinct differences between the first adsorbed monolayer and additional fullerene layers indicating differences in bonding and charge transfer. Our results are compared to theoretical calculations.

C70 ordering on nanostructured SrTiO3(001)

The nanostructured (7 x 4) surface of SrTiO(3)(001) is used as a template to order C(70) into single-molecule-wide chains and linear islands.