Mapping the capacitance of self-assembled monolayers at metal/electrolyte interfaces at the nanoscale by in-liquid scanning dielectric microscopy

Ruben Millan-Solsona, Martí Checa, Laura Fumagalli, Gabriel Gomila

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

13 Scopus citations

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 languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)20658-20668
Number of pages11
JournalNanoscale
Volume12
Issue number40
DOIs
StatePublished - Oct 28 2020
Externally publishedYes

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.

FundersFunder number
EU FEDERTEC2016-79156-P
European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program
Horizon 2020 Framework Programme819417
European CommissionSPM2.0, 721874
European Research Council
Generalitat de Catalunya2017-SGR1079
Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad
Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats
Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad, Gobierno de España

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