Coexisting Charge States in a Unary Organic Monolayer Film on a Metal

J Phys Chem Lett. 2019 Nov 7;10(21):6438-6445. doi: 10.1021/acs.jpclett.9b02231. Epub 2019 Oct 9.

Abstract

The electronic and geometric structures of tetracene films on Ag(110) and Cu(110) have been studied with photoemission tomography and compared to that of pentacene. Despite similar energy level alignment of the two oligoacenes on these surfaces revealed by conventional ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy, the momentum-space resolved photoemission tomography reveals a significant difference in both structural and electronic properties of tetracene and pentacene films. Particularly, the saturated monolayer of tetracene on Ag(110) is found to consist of two molecular species that, despite having the same orientation, are electronically very different-while one molecule remains neutral, another is charged because of electron donation from the substrate.