Investigation of morphologies and optical features in ultra-thin organic films by SNOAM

The thin films have been studied by scanning near-field optical/atomic forc e microscopy (SNOAM). The typical structural changes of the aggregates of t he merocyanine molecules were measured in the state of ultra-thin LB films by SNOAM. In the continuous measurement on the dye, the appearance of near- field optical transmission images showed dependence on the near-field irrad iation laser beam. the topographical image indicate that this LB film has m ore rough surface morphology than that of normal expectation and LB film is grained with average grain size about 50 nm. The near-field transmission i mage shows highly separated structure of transmission and independent image on the surface topography. The dual information, their optical structure a nd surface morphology, afforded by SNOAM system is valuable for thin film r esearch. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.