Homoepitaxy of Crystalline Rubrene Thin Films

Fusella, Michael A.; Schreiber, Frank; Abbasi, Kevin; Kim, Jae Joon; Briseno, Alejandro L.; Rand, Barry P.

doi:10.1021/acs.nanolett.7b00380

Homoepitaxy of Crystalline Rubrene Thin Films

Journal Article · Mon Apr 10 00:00:00 EDT 2017 · Nano Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.nanolett.7b00380· OSTI ID:1595415

Fusella, Michael A. ^[1]; Schreiber, Frank ^[2]; Abbasi, Kevin ^[3]; Kim, Jae Joon ^[4]; Briseno, Alejandro L. ^[4]; ^[5]

Princeton Univ., NJ (United States); Princeton University
Univ. Tübingen (Germany)
Case Western Reserve Univ., Cleveland, OH (United States)
Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA (United States)
Princeton Univ., NJ (United States)

The smooth surface of crystalline rubrene films formed through an abrupt heating process provides a valuable platform to study organic homoepitaxy. By varying growth rate and substrate temperature, we are able to manipulate the onset of a transition from layer-by-layer to island growth modes, while the crystalline thin films maintain a remarkably smooth surface (less than 2.3 nm root-mean-square roughness) even with thick (80 nm) adlayers. We also uncover evidence of point and line defect formation in these films, indicating that homoepitaxy under our conditions is not at equilibrium or strain-free. Point defects that are resolved as screw dislocations can be eliminated under closer-to-equilibrium conditions, whereas we are not able to eliminate the formation of line defects within our experimental constraints at adlayer thicknesses above ~25 nm. We are, however, able to eliminate these line defects by growing on a bulk single crystal of rubrene, indicating that the line defects are a result of strain built into the thin film template. We utilize electron backscatter diffraction, which is a first for organics, to investigate the origin of these line defects and find that they preferentially occur parallel to the (002) plane, which is in agreement with expectations based on calculated surface energies of various rubrene crystal facets. By combining the benefits of crystallinity, low surface roughness, and thickness-tunability, this system provides an important study of attributes valuable to high-performance organic electronic devices.

View Accepted Manuscript (DOE)

Research Organization:: Princeton Univ., NJ (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES) (SC-22). Materials Sciences & Engineering Division

Grant/Contract Number:: SC0012458

OSTI ID:: 1595415

Alternate ID(s):: OSTI ID: 1534791

Journal Information:: Nano Letters, Journal Name: Nano Letters Journal Issue: 5 Vol. 17; ISSN 1530-6984

Publisher:: American Chemical SocietyCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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36 MATERIALS SCIENCE
Homoepitaxy
crystals
electron backscatter diffraction
line defect
roughness
rubrene
screw dislocation
thin films

Homoepitaxy of Crystalline Rubrene Thin Films

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