Epitaxial growth of thin films of organic molecular semiconductors

When dealing with thin films of organic molecular materials, the concept of epitaxial growth has to be revised to be matched with the characteristics of these materials, in particular their intrinsic anisotropy and their weak bonding in the solid. Indeed, these peculiar properties of molecular materials make the nucleation and growth of two-dimensional islands and layers possible only under proper conditions. Such conditions can be successfully tuned, so that island growth, layer-by-layer epitaxial growth, and pseudomorphic growth can be obtained, after the thermodynamics and kinetics of the lm growth pro-cess are properly studied and are known.