Si/SiO2-Templated Formation of Ultraflat Metal Surfaces on Glass, Polymer, and Solder Supports: Their Use as Substrates for Self-Assembled Monolayers

This paper describes the use of several methods of template stripping (TS) to produce ultraflat films of silver, gold, palladium, and platinum on both rigid and polymeric mechanical supports:  a composite of glass and ultraviolet (UV)-curable adhesive (optical adhesive, OA), solder, a composite of poly(dimethyl siloxane) (PDMS) and OA, and bare OA. Silicon supporting its native oxide layer (Si/SiO2) serves as a template for both mechanical template stripping (mTS), in which the metal film is mechanically cleaved from the template, and chemical template stripping (cTS), in which the film−template composite is immersed in a solution of thiols, and the formation of the SAM on the metal film causes the film to separate from the template. Films formed on all supports have lower root-mean-square (rms) roughness (as measured by atomic force microscopy, AFM) than films used as-deposited (AS-DEP) by electron-beam evaporation. Monolayers of n-dodecanethiolate formed by the mTS and cTS methods are effectively indist...