In-situ study of multi-phase indium nanoparticle growth on/into CuPcF4 organic thin film in ultra-high vacuum conditions

[Display omitted] •The hybrid nanocomposite was prepared of CuPcF4 thin film and indium nanoparticles.•Indium atoms diffuse along the surface, forming 2D islets, and to the volume, assembling into 3D nanoparticles.•The nanoparticles exhibit unusual fcc crystal structure along with ordinary for indium bct one.•Photoemission studies have shown considerable n-doping of the film and surface dipole formation.•Only modest chemical interaction between the materials was detected. We study the in-situ growth of a nanocomposite material consisting of a thin CuPcF4 film and multiphase/multidimensional indium nanoparticles, self-organizing on the surface and in the bulk, at various stages of thermal deposition of metal on an organic film under ultrahigh vacuum conditions. The analysis of high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HR-TEM) images provided valuable information about the evolution of morphology, size, density, and distribution of indium nanoparticles upon indium deposition. These 2D/3D ultra-small nano-objects turned out to have not only body-centered tetragonal (bct) crystal structure, typical for bulk indium, but also unusual face-centered cubic (fcc) one. Using a synchrotron facility, the study of the electronic structure of the hybrid nanocomposite on variable stages of metal deposition was performed by XPS and NEXAFS. Core-level spectra related to the organics indicated reasonably weak chemical interaction of indium with CuPcF4 molecules, which is not the case for a number of metal/organic semiconductor systems, while valence band spectra have shown a considerable change of the material electronic properties. The energy level diagrams, derived from the experiment, can be applied for the creation of new prototypes of metal-organic memory devices.