ABSTRACT
Divalent metal ions crosslink the carboxylate groups and are often used to enhance the stability of transferred films. The difference in solubility between a free acid and its metal salt was used by Blodgett to produce films with a tunable refractive index through a process termed skeletonization. Although a picture is emerging that suggests that polar headgroup interactions can dictate the structure of Langmuir-Blodgett (LB)films, historically little attention has been devoted toward using ionic headgroup interactions to purposefully control monolayer structure. In contrast to the tetravalent zirconium phosphonate case, spectroscopic and structural analyses indicate that the manganese phosphonate LB film has the same in-plane structure as the known solid-state analogs. The observed magnetic exchange demonstrates the potential for introducing cooperative phenomena into LB films through the incorporation of extended solid inorganic structures. Future work will be aimed at designing functional organic molecules to complement the extended solid inorganic systems.
