Crystallization on Self Assembled Monolayers

Over the past two decades, self assembled monolayers (SAMs) (Love et al., 2005; Smith et al., 2004; Ulman, 1996) have been extensively studied due to their many applications in various fields such as electrochemistry (Eckerman et al., 2010), biosensors (Nyquist et al., 2000), protein separation (Chun and Stroeve, 2002) and enantiomer separation (Mastai, 2009). SAMs are organic assemblies formed by the adsorption of molecules from solution or from the gas phase onto the surfaces of solids. These molecules spontaneously organize into highly ordered, crystalline (or semicrystalline) two dimensional films. The molecules composing the SAMs adsorb to the surface through a “headgroup”, a functional group with a high affinity for the solid surfaces. Two of the most widely studied systems of SAMs are alkanethiols adsorbed on metals, including gold, silver and platinum and alkylsilane chains formed on silicon dioxide surfaces, including glass and mica. In these cases, the “headgroups” are thiols, which have a high affinity for metal surfaces and silanes, which have a high affinity for silicon-dioxide surfaces. SAMs have become so popular since they offer a unique combination of physical properties that allow fundamental studies of interfacial chemistry, solvent molecule interactions and self-organization. Their wellordered arrays and ease of functionalization make them ideal model systems in many fields.