Endohedral metallofullerenes in self-assembled monolayers.

A method has been developed for the attachment of a dithiolane group to endohedral metallofullerenes via a 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition reaction. This sulfur-containing functional group serves as an anchor, enabling efficient immobilisation of endohedral fullerenes on Au(111) surfaces at room temperature, directly from the solution phase. The functionalised fullerenes form disordered monolayers that exhibit no long-range ordering, which is attributed to both the strong bonding of the dithiolane anchor to the surface and to the conformational flexibility of the functional group.

Variable-force tapping atomic force microscopy as a tool in the characterization of organic devices.

A common method for characterizing the phase separation of materials in mixtures is tapping mode atomic force microscopy (AFM). However, AFM results are influenced by surface-energy effects and the employed tapping force, and it might therefore be difficult to attain correct information regarding the bulk with such a surface-imaging technique. In this work, we present a way of imaging material phase separation in an improved manner by recording a series of AFM images at different tapping force.