Device Treatment of Organic Nanofibers: Embedding, Detaching, and Cutting

It has been demonstrated thoroughly that organic molecules such as phenylenes can form long, quasisingle crystalline aggregates (“nanofibers” or “nanoneedles”) of parallel to the surface-oriented molecules on cleaved muscovite mica upon vapor deposition (organic molecular beam epitaxy, OMBE). Phenylenes of that kind are rodlike molecules of usually between four and six benzene rings, which emit polarized blue light after UV excitation below 400 nm. Via functionalization with, e.g., methyl oxide or chlorine end groups the emission spectra can be significantly modified. The surface grown nanofibers are all mutually parallel oriented because of strong electric dipole fields on the mica surface and a quasi-heteroepitaxial relationship between adsorbate and substrate [1, 2]. That way domains of parallel aggregates up to square centimeter size are grown.