Abstract
Organic self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) at metal/electrolyte interfaces have been thoroughly investigated both from fundamental and applied points of view. A relevant figure of merit of metal/SAM/electrolyte interfaces is the specific capacitance, which determines the charge that can be accumulated at the metal electrode. Here, we show that the specific capacitance of non-uniform alkanethiol SAMs at gold/electrolyte interfaces can be quantitatively measured and mapped at the nanoscaleby in-liquid scanning dielectric microscopy in force detection mode. We show that sub-100 nm spatial resolution in ultrathin (<1 nm) SAMs can be achieved, largely improving the performance of current sensing characterization techniques. The present results provide access to study the dielectric properties of metal/SAM/electrolyte interfaces at scales that have remained unexplored until now.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 20658-20668 |
| Number of pages | 11 |
| Journal | Nanoscale |
| Volume | 12 |
| Issue number | 40 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Oct 28 2020 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Funding
This work was partially supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (MINECO) and EU FEDER through Grant No. TEC2016-79156-P. We also acknowledge support from Generalitat de Catalunya through Grant No. 2017-SGR1079 and the CERCA Program and from the Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA) for an ICREA Academia Award (G. G.). This work also received funding from the European Commission under Grant Agreement No. H2020-MSCA-721874 (SPM2.0). LF received funding from the European Research Council (grant agreement no. 819417 Liquid2DM) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program. We acknowledge the MicroFabSpace and Microscopy Characterization Facility, Unit 7 of ICTS “NANBIOSIS” from CIBER at IBEC. We acknowledge G. Gramse and M. A. Edwards for earlier work performed on this topic, and R. Hidalgo and M. Di Muzio for assistance in the preparation of the SAMs.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| EU FEDER | TEC2016-79156-P |
| European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program | |
| Horizon 2020 Framework Programme | 819417 |
| European Commission | SPM2.0, 721874 |
| European Research Council | |
| Generalitat de Catalunya | 2017-SGR1079 |
| Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad | |
| Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats | |
| Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad, Gobierno de España |