Disorder, solvent effects and substitutional self-assembly of alkane dithiols from alkane thiol SAMs

Substitutional self-assembly of nonanedithiol from a hexanethiol self-assembled monolayer and the effects of use of ethanol and n-hexane as solvents were investigated. It was found that presence of original solvents in the HT SAM allowed easy replacement, while dried SAMs were more resilient to substitution and much longer times are necessary for substitution to occur. In general substitution in ethanol leads to production of a disordered dithiol SAM, with existence of extra molecules bonded to the SAM. Well ordered substituted SAMs were obtained with degassed n-hexane solutions and in absence of ambient light.