The submonolayer assembly of C60F48 surface acceptors on the hydrogen-terminated (100) diamond surface

TL;DR

This study investigates how C60F48 molecules assemble on hydrogen-terminated diamond surfaces and how this affects surface doping, revealing a transition from multilayer islands to a single layer upon annealing and a 20% reduction in carrier density.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the assembly behavior of C60F48 on diamond and its impact on energy level alignment and doping efficiency.

Findings

Disordered multilayer islands form initially.

Annealing induces a transition to a single wetting layer.

Carrier density decreases by 20% after annealing.

Abstract

We have characterised the submonolayer assembly of C60F48 molecular surface acceptors on the hydrogen terminated (100) diamond surface using scanning tunneling microscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and explored the influence this assembly has on the energy level alignment which governs surface transfer doping. Following deposition, disordered multilayered islands are observed. Annealing to 90$^{\circ} \rm{C}$ causes a transition from dewetting multi-layered islands to a single wetting layer at sufficiently high coverage, accompanied by a change in the energy alignment between the C60F48 and the diamond surface which consequently decreased the carrier density induced by transfer doping by 20%.