The adsorption of iron phthalocyanine on graphite: A scanning tunnelling microscopy study

Different adsorption phases of iron phthalocyanine (FePc) on highly oriented pyrolitic graphite (HOPG) have been characterized by scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM). Evaporation of FePc onto the graphite (0 0 0 1) surface, kept at room temperature, results in the formation of three-dimensional molecular islands.After annealing to 400 °C different two-dimensional features are identified, depending on the initial coverage. At low doses, domains with well defined boundaries have been observed, within which molecules tend to organise in chains. At higher coverage, islands exhibiting well-ordered densely-packed square or hexagonal molecular arrangement have been resolved. For the adsorption structures corresponding to one monolayer islands our results show that the molecules adsorb with the molecular plane parallel to the surface. The high resolution STM images allow us to resolve the orientation of single molecules and subsequently we suggest that the molecular monolayer is stabilized by van der Waals interactions. The characterization of the observed Moiré contrast and a comparison with other similar systems underlines the importance of the central metal in the molecule-molecule and molecule-substrate interactions, which govern the molecular adsorption geometry.