Crystals of a variety of substances including elements, minerals, simple salts, organic molecular crystals, and high polymers forgo long-range translational order by twisting and bending as they grow. These deviations have been observed in crystals ranging in size from nanometers to centimeters. How and why so many materials choose dramatic non-crystallographic distortions is analyzed, with an emphasis on crystal chemistries that give rise to stresses operating either on surfaces of crystallites or within the bulk.

Vapor-deposited organic glasses can be produced with enhanced thermal stability and tunable molecular orientation by controlling the substrate temperature during deposition. Recent work has also shown improved charge carrier mobility associated with anisotropic molecular packing in organic electronics. Here grazing-incidence wide-angle X-ray scattering (GIWAXS) is used to characterize the structural anisotropy in glasses of a hole transport material, N,N′-bis(3-methylphenyl)-N,N′-diphenylbenzidine, commonly referred to as TPD. The TPD glasses were prepared by physical vapor deposition at substrate temperatures between 0.79 T g and 0.98 T g , where T g is the glass transition temperature. A GIWAXS-derived orientation order parameter is used to quantify the anisotropy observed in the scattering patterns of the glasses. The GIWAXS-order parameter exhibits both positive and negative values as a function of substrate temperature, indicating either face-on or edge-on packing, and correlates well with a spectroscopic ellipsometry-derived order parameter that is sensitive to molecular orientation. We propose molecular packing arrangements based on the combination of the two order parameters and explore the relationship between kinetic stability and glass structure.

Anisotropic molecular packing is a key feature that makes glasses prepared by physical vapor deposition (PVD) unique materials, warranting a mechanistic understanding of how a PVD glass attains its structure. To this end, we use X-ray scattering and ellipsometry to characterize the structure of PVD glasses of tris(8-hydroxyquinoline) aluminum ( Alq3), a molecule used in organic electronics, and compare our results to simulations of its supercooled liquid. X-ray scattering reveals a tendency for molecular layering in Alq3 glasses that depends upon the substrate temperature during deposition and the deposition rate. Simulations reveal that the Alq3 supercooled liquid, like liquid metals, exhibits surface layering. We propose that the layering in Alq3 glasses observed here as well as the previously reported bulk dipole orientation are inherited from the surface structure of the supercooled liquid. This work significantly advances our understanding of the mechanism governing the formation of anisotropic structure in PVD glasses.

We show that deposition rate substantially affects the anisotropic structure of thin glassy films produced by physical vapor deposition. Itraconazole, a glass-forming liquid crystal, was deposited at rates spanning 3 orders of magnitude over a 25 K range of substrate temperatures, and structure was characterized by ellipsometry and X-ray scattering. Both the molecular orientation and the spacing of the smectic layers obey deposition rate–substrate temperature superposition, such that lowering the deposition rate is equivalent to raising the substrate temperature. We identify two different surface relaxations that are responsible for structural order in the vapor-deposited glasses and find that the process controlling molecular orientation is accelerated by more than 3 orders of magnitude at the surface relative to the bulk. The identification of distinct surface processes responsible for anisotropic structural features in vapor-deposited glasses will enable more precise control over the structure of glassy materials used in organic electronics.

Spontaneous twisting of single crystals is a common growth induced deformation. But as twisted crystals thicken they can untwist. restoring a straight form. The mechanics of this process was studied for vapor grown needle-like crystals of N-benzoylglycine (hippuric acid) and N-(2-thienylcarbonyl)glycine, and analyzed by phenomenological models. The elastic stress at the crystal tip undergoes plastic relaxation leading to the twisting deformations. As the crystal grows and thickens it partially untwists showing linear increases of the twist period with crystal thickness. Such behavior was simulated with a model that assumes the constant density of defects in successive growth layers. However. transmission electron microscopy does not reveal any dislocations or other extended defects typically associated with plastic deformation. Published data on other materials show the linear dependencies of pitch on thickness suggesting comparable untwisting mechanisms for different materials.