Fluorescence spectroscopy of PTCDA molecules on the KCl(100) surface in the limit of low coverages: site selection and diffusion

Abstract

We performed fluorescence (FL) and fluorescence excitation (FLE) spectroscopy on the model molecule perylene-3,4,9,10-tetracarboxyl acid dianhydride (PTCDA) for very low coverages (below 1% of a monolayer) on thin (100) oriented KCl films. Two different states of PTCDA molecules can be distinguished in the spectra: an initial state, which is observed directly after deposition of the molecules onto the cold sample at 20 K, and a final state, which is found after intensive optical excitation or thermal annealing of the sample. The spectrum of the final state is blue-shifted with respect to that of the initial state by 130 ± 15 cm⁻¹ and exhibits lines with significantly reduced widths. This can be explained by diffusion of molecules from initially populated terrace sites to energetically favoured step edge sites. Polarization dependent spectroscopy reveals the same azimuthal orientation of the molecules on both adsorption sites and leads to a model of the adsorption geometry of PTCDA at the KCl step sites. Our experiment demonstrates how optical spectroscopy can be used to investigate kinetic processes of fluorescent molecules on surfaces.