We focus on the phenomenon of thermal treatment of nitrogen based self-assembled small molecule films fabricated on copper, which utilize nitrogen-containing group as anchoring group, investigated by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) quantitative characterization. The interesting result is that the ratio of Cu2p signal intensity decreased after annealing which is opposite to the general theory because the molecules would normally be decayed or removed after annealing and the ratio of Cu2p signal intensity should be increased. We demonstrate that the phenomenon is related to the intermolecular distance variation (e.q. packing density) in multilayers. The small molecule films on copper will rearrange after thermal treatment and become the denser and thinner layers characterized by water contact angle, ellipsometry and IR. Moreover, the packing density also obviously affects the photoelectron attenuation lengths (AL) of XPS which makes Cu2p signal intensity decreased after annealing.

Attenuation length versus packing density: Nitrogen based self-assembled small molecule film on copper with thermal treatment

Macromolecular Chemistry: The Second Century

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ACS Spring 2020 National Meeting & Expo

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.