Structural Characterization of a Pentacene Monolayer on an Amorphous SiO₂ Substrate with Grazing Incidence X-ray Diffraction

Grazing incidence X-ray diffraction reveals that a pentacene monolayer, grown on an amorphous SiO₂ substrate that is commonly used as a dielectric layer in organic thin film transistors (OTFTs), is crystalline. A preliminary energy-minimized model of the monolayer, based on the GIXD data, reveals that the pentacene molecules adopt a herringbone arrangement with their long axes tilted slightly from the substrate normal. Although this arrangement resembles the general packing features of the (001) layer in single crystals of bulk pentacene, the monolayer lattice parameters and crystal structure differ from those of the bulk. Because carrier transport in pentacene OTFTs is presumed to occur in the semiconductor layers near the dielectric interface, the discovery of a crystalline monolayer structure on amorphous SiO₂ has important implications for transport in OTFTs.