Eur. Phys. J. D 52, 103-106 (2009)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2009-00068-x

An atomic force microscope study of vanadium-benzene sandwich clusters soft-landed on self-assembled monolayers

¹ Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science and Technology, Keio University, 3-14-1 Hiyoshi, Kohoku-ku, Yokohama, 223-8522, Japan
² Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Kobe University, Nada-ku, Kobe, 657-8501, Japan
³ CREST, Japan Science and Technology Agency, Kawaguchi, Saitama, 332-0012, Japan

Corresponding author: ^a nakajima@chem.keio.ac.jp

Received: 19 September 2008
Published online: 6 March 2009

Abstract

Multiple-decker vanadium-benzene sandwich clusters V_n(benzene)_n+1 produced by a laser-vaporization synthesis method were soft-landed onto self-assembled monolayers of alkanethiol (C₁₈H-SAM) and fluorinated alkanethiol (C₁₀F-SAM) at 200 K. Noncontact atomic force microscopy has been used to examine the resulting adsorption states of the clusters landed on the SAMs at room temperature. For each SAM substrate, the aggregates of the deposited clusters were observed at the vacancy islands and near the steps of the SAM surface. The result indicates that, at room temperature, the clusters landed on the SAM substrate thermally diffuse on the surface to form columnar-shape islands around the defect sites of the SAM surface.