| AVS 64th International Symposium & Exhibition | |
| Nanometer-scale Science and Technology Division | Thursday Sessions |
| Session NS+AS+EM+MI+SP+SS-ThM |
| Session: | Nanoscale Imaging and Characterization |
| Presenter: | Nan Jiang, University of Illinois at Chicago |
| Authors: | J. Schultz, University of Illinois at Chicago P. Whiteman, University of Illinois at Chicago Z. Porach, University of Illinois at Chicago N. Jiang, University of Illinois at Chicago |
| Correspondent: | Click to Email |
In response to the ever increasing demand for cleaner, cheaper energy generation, significant efforts have been made to fabricate and characterize materials that can be used for optoelectronic devices. Porphyrins, phthalocyanines, and their derivatives have been involved in many surface studies to investigate their optoelectronic properties for use in organic photovoltaics and other optoelectronic devices, such as organic light-emitting diodes (OLED). Our research take place in a commercial ultrahigh vacuum (UHV) scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) chamber. Molecules were evaporated onto various single crystal substrates at a base pressure of 10-10 torr. Different surface-supported structures were imaged via STM at sub-molecular resolution, allowing the competition of molecule-substrate and molecule-molecule interactions to be investigated.
In addition to imaging via STM, we also performed spectroscopy experiments in the forms of UHV Tip Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (TERS), supplementing vital vibrational information at single-molecule spatial resolution. These tools provide a complete picture of the system in question, allowing our lab to answer previously unknown questions regarding the molecule-molecule interactions in order to characterize the molecule’s exciton-generating and electron-transferring properties at a fundamental level.