Thermal Healing of the Nanometer-Wide Lines of Self-Assembled Monolayer

The structural and thermal properties of the nanometer-wide lines of a self-assembled monolayer (SAM) were investigated using molecular dynamics simulations. When grown by contact printing, a linear SAM contained a significant portion (8%) of unbound molecules that are inverted among upright molecules. This paper proposes thermal annealing (300–400 K) as an efficient method to remove the unbound molecules and improve the quality of the linear SAM. The partial melting of the SAM during heating enabled the unbound molecules to flip and adsorb. With subsequent cooling, the linear SAM recovered its compact ordered structure. The molecular mechanisms and activation energies involved in the thermal annealing were elucidated.