Vacuum deposition films of oxadiazole compounds: formation and structure investigation

The search for alternative routes of organic thin film formation is stimula ted by the outstanding properties of these films in such fields as nonlinea r optics, photonic data processing and molecular electronics. The formation of highly ordered multilayer structures by thermal vacuum deposition (VD) of organic compounds is an essential step toward the application of supramo lecular organic architectures in technical systems. The VD of an amphiphili c substituted 2.5-diphenylene-1,3,4-oxadiazole 1 onto silicon substrates at defined temperature was used for the formation of ultrathin films. The str uctural data obtained for the VD-films of oxadiazole 1 by means of X-ray re flectivity, X-ray grazing incidence diffraction and atomic force microscopy (AFM) investigations indicate the formation of well ordered oxadiazole mul tilayers, The structure of the VD-multilayers is compared with that of Lang muir-Blodgett (LB) films and thermally treated LB-multilayers prepared from the same compound. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.