Organic nanorods and the importance of morphology and chemical substitution.

What is it about?

Self assembling of ordered structures is an important issue in nanotechnology. Assemblies of newly synthesized substituted pentacenes (very popular as organic electronic materials) show distinctive nanorod morphology on gold single crystals. The dimensionality of the nanorods adds a further source of interest in these molecules besides their electronic structure. Linked to low dimensionality in morphology, as a nanorod, this can lead to important applications in devices, or toward interdigitated heterostructures. The nanorods show a rough surface morphology, which was investigated with atomic force microscopy. The use of molecular simulation techniques to investigate the energetic barriers to diffusion and to traverse step edges has highlighted their influence on the nanorod roughness.

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Why is it important?

The synergy between experiments and simulation has revealed that the barriers to surface diffusion on a terrace are anisotropic and that their direction favors the formation of nanorods in these materials. This new work shows that the appropriate choice of the substituents is a key that can be used in device engineering, together with the control of the barriers, useful to tune the nanorod morphology.