Deposition of intact tetrairon(III) single molecule magnet monolayers on gold: an STM, XPS, and ToF-SIMS investigation

The ability of a tetranuclear iron(III) single-molecule magnet functionalized with thioacetyl-terminated ligands to form monolayers on gold has been investigated by a multitechnique approach based on STM, XPS and ToF-SIMS. We discuss in detail several aspects, which are relevant to the reported observation of a memory effect on the monolayer prepared from dichloromethane (Mannini et al., Nat. Mater., 2009, 8, 194). In particular we show that the adsorbate comprises intact surface-bound Fe4 clusters as opposed to microcrystals or multilayers. The influence of the solvent used for the self assembly process on the morphology, composition and structure of the adsorbate is also studied for four different solvents (dichloromethane, n-hexane, toluene, 1,4-dioxane).