Self-assembly fronts in collision: impinging ordering organosilane layers

Colliding autocatalytic wave-fronts of self-assembling organosilane (OS) layers are generated through the controlled positioning of sources of the volatile OS material at the edges of a silica wafer and through adjustment of the container dimensions in which the wafer sources are placed. The concentration profiles and molecular orientation of the OS colliding wave-fronts are assessed by means of combinatorial near-edge X-ray absorption fine structure (NEXAFS) spectroscopy. For systems involving self-assembly wave-fronts developing from the same OS precursor molecule, the shapes of interfacial region arising from front collision are centro-symmetrical and slowly 'heal' to form a uniform OS layer. In contrast, heterogeneous systems, involving OS molecules having different chemistries exhibit different rates of advance and highly non-symmetrical concentration profiles after front collision. We discuss the general nature of our OS colliding front data in terms of a mean field model of colliding reaction-diffusion fronts that generalizes a model introduced before for describing single OS front propagation.