Alkyl chain conformation and the electronic structure of octyl heavy chalcogenolate monolayers adsorbed on Au(111).

Adsorption states of dioctyl dichalcogenides (dioctyl disulfide, dioctyl diselenide, and dioctyl ditelluride) arranged on Au(111) have been studied by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), infrared-visible sum-frequency generation (SFG), and ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy (UPS). XPS measurements suggest that dioctyl dichalcogenides dissociatively adsorbed on Au(111) surfaces to form the corresponding monolayers having chalcogen-gold covalent bonds. The elemental compositions of octanechalcogenolates on Au(111) indicate that the saturation coverages of the octyl heavy chalcogenolate (OcSe, OcTe) monolayers are lower than that of the octanethiolate (OcS) self-assembled monolayers (SAMs). The SFG observations of the CH(2) vibrational bands for the heavy chalcogenolate monolayers strongly suggest that a discernible amount of gauche conformation exists in the monolayers, while OcS SAMs adopt highly ordered all-trans conformation. The intensity ratio of the symmetric and asymmetric CH(3) stretching vibration modes measured by SFG shows that the average tilt angle of the methyl group of the OcSe monolayers is greater than that of the OcS SAMs. The larger tilt angle of the methyl group and the existence of a discernible amount of gauche conformation in the OcSe monolayers are due to the lower surface coverage of the OcSe monolayers compared with the OcS SAMs. The smaller polarization dependence in the angle-resolved UPS (ARUPS) spectra of the OcSe monolayers than that of the OcS SAMs is caused by the more disordered structures of the alkyl chain in the former. XPS, SFG, and ARUPS measurements indicate a similar tendency for the OcTe monolayers. The density of states (DOS) observed by UPS at around 1.3 eV for OcS adsorbed on Au(111) is considered to be the antibonding state of the Au-sulfur bond. Similar DOS is also observed by UPS at around 1.0 eV for the OcSe monolayers and at approximately 1.6 eV for the OcTe monolayers on Au(111).