Making metal and semiconductor contacts on alkanethiolate self-assembled monolayers adsorbed on gold

Understanding and controlling the interactions of metals and semiconductors with organic substrates is critical to many technological applications. The primary goal of the research described in this dissertation is to understand the metal/organic and semiconductor/organic interactions and to develop methods to fabricate stable and robust metallic and semiconducting contacts on organic thin layers.;Alkanethiolate self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) adsorbed on Au, which have highly organized structures with a uniform density of terminal organic functional groups, were employed as model organic systems. Chemical vapor deposition (CVD) was employed to deposit selectively aluminum and alumina on functionalized SAMs. Methods were also developed to make stable Cu overlayers on SAMs via electroless deposition (EL). Finally, chemical bath deposition (CBD) was employed to deposit ZnS and CdSe on functionalized SAMs. The resulting deposit structures and reaction mechanisms involved were studied using time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (TOF SIMS), scanning electron microscope (SEM) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS).