Controlling Nanostructures by Templated Templates: Inheriting Molecular Orientation in Binary Heterostructures.

Precise preparation strategies are required to fabricate molecular nanostructures of specific arrangement. In bottom-up approaches, where nanostructures are gradually formed by piecing together individual parts to the final structure, the self-ordering mechanisms of the involved structures are utilized. In order to achieve the desired structures regarding morphology, grain size, and orientation of the individual moieties, templates can be applied, which influence the formation process of subsequent structures. However, this strategy is of limited use for complex architectures because the templates only influence the structure formation at the interface between the template and the first compound. Here, we discuss the implementation of so-called templated templates and analyze to what extent orientations of the initial layers are inherited in the top layers of another compound to enable structural control in binary heterostructures. For that purpose, we prepared crystalline templates of the organic semiconductors pentacene and perfluoropentacene in different exclusive orientations. We observe that for templates of both individual materials the molecular orientation is inherited in the top layers of the respective counterpart. This behavior is also observed for various other molecules, indicating the robustness of this approach.