Surface structures in spatio-temporal ordering of alkanethiol self-assembled monolayers on Au(111)

Growth process of hexanethiol self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) on (111) was investigated by scanning tunneling microscopy (STM). STM imaging clearly exhibited intermediate structures in a molecular level showing phase transition from disordered phase to close-packed monolayers fur the first time, It is assumed thar these structures are due to the rearrangement of alkyl chains to optimize the van der Waals interaction between alkyl chains in SAMs.