An in-situ X-ray photoelectron study of the interaction between vapor-deposited A1 atoms and hydroxyl or amine terminated self-assembled monolayers

For SAMs, the monolayer functional group coverage is approximately 4.6x1014 functional groups per square cm17. By using the bulk density of aluminum, a 1:1 ratio of Al atoms to SAM functional groups will occur at 0.076 nm aluminum coverage. However, two or more atoms of Al can react with a single terminal functional group (for example, in A120 3 each Al has reacted with 1.5 O’s). In contrast, a single layer of aluminum atoms arranged in a cubic lattice on the SAM surface has 4.89xl015 Al atoms per cm2. Thus a single atomic layer of Al has approximately eleven times the number of SAM surface functional groups.