Field ion-scanning tunneling microscopy study of c₆₀ on the si(100) surface

Field ion-scanning tunneling microscopy was employed to study the monolayer and multilayer adsorption behaviors of the C₆₀ fullerene on the Si(100)2×1 surface. The C₆₀ molecules reside stably in the trough at room temperature without rotation, encompassing the 8 neighbouring dimer-forming surface Si atoms with the nearest neighbour distance of 12 Å. For the first and second layers, only local ordering of square and quasi-hexagonal patterns was observed. The orderly Stranski-Krastanov mode island formation with the hexagonal packing was observed above the third layer with its lattice constant of 10.4 Å.