Heteroepitaxial thin film of iron phthalocyanine on Ag(1 1 1)

Ordering of submonolayer iron phthalocyanine (FePc) molecules deposited on Ag(1 1 1) was investigated using scanning tunneling microscopy. The room temperature deposition of FePc alone, without any annealing, results in no ordered overlayers. However, posterior annealing the substrate to 475 K leads to the formation of a two-dimensional oblique lattice with the lattice constants of 16.2 ± 0.3 Å and the angle of 78 ± 1° between them. The resulting FePc lattice is commensurate to the substrate lattice. In addition, the nearest neighbor distance in the lattice is significantly increased through a distinctive molecular orientation of the FePc molecules within the unit cell. The commensurate lattice with a large intermolecular distance is in sharp contrast to that observed from a close-packed square lattice that many other metallo-phthalocyanine molecules often self-assemble into. A possible reasoning behind this intriguing structure is discussed.