Epitaxially grown sexiphenyl nanocrystals on the organic KAP(0 1 0) surface

Nanocrystals of the organic molecule sexiphenyl are grown on the (0 1 0) cleavage plane of potassium hydrogen phthalate (KAP). The single crystalline organic surface is composed exclusively by phenyl rings and displays two distinct directions of aromatic rows forming surface corrugations. Sexiphenyl crystals grow epitaxially ordered with the (203¯) plane parallel to KAP(0 1 0) with the long molecular axes of the molecule aligned along one specific surface corrugation; empirical force field calculations confirm the experimentally observed epitaxial alignment of the sexiphenyl crystals. The sexiphenyl crystals grow as elongated islands, which can be shown to be of single crystalline nature.