Abstract
A range of water-insoluble materials, when spread from a solvent onto an air–water interface, form monolayers, Langmuir films, which can be built up on a solid substrate to give well-defined multilayer coatings, Langmuir–Blodgett (L–B) films, resembling fatty-acid layers1–3. These L–B films have aroused intense interest because of their potential applications as electrically-active materials4, optical elements5 and electron beam resists6, for which it would be very useful to know the structure of the monolayers. Although significant structural information has been derived from electron diffraction studies, an electron micrograph would be ideal; because of the fragility of conventional materials and their degradation in the electron beam, however, such imaging has not been achieved till now. (Electron micrographs of L–B films of the heavy-metal complex Th[(CF3CO) 2CH]4 have been reported7, but the films were not single monolayers.) We present here the first electron micrographs of a single monolayer.
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Fryer, J., Hann, R. & Eyres, B. Single organic monolayer imaging by electron microscopy. Nature 313, 382–384 (1985). https://doi.org/10.1038/313382a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/313382a0
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