Adsorption of amide‐containing alkanethiols on gold

Abstract

Monolayers of a new series of amide‐containing alkanethiol compounds, CH3(CH2)n‐2C(O)NHC2H4SH (referred as CnC2SH, n=4, 5, 5, 8), were self‐assembled from ethanol solutions onto gold and their structures have been characterized using the reflectance absorption infrared spectroscopy (RA‐FTIR) and wettability measurement. It has been proved that the CO and N‐H bonds are parallel to the gold surface and the orientations of alkyl chain in these Self‐Assembled Monolayers (SAMs) are perpendicular to the surface. The special orientation of the amide moiety and molecular axis are suggested to be attributed to the hydrogen‐bonding formed between the amide moieties of neighbor molecules. Meanwhile, wettability measurement reveals that the packing degree of the SAMs depends on the length of the alkyl chains in the thiol molecules. These results demonstrate that both the hydrogen‐bonding and the length of the alkyl chain exerts the tremendous influnece on the orientation of amide‐containing alkanethiol molecules. And also, it give us a way to control the molecular orientation in SAMs in molecular level.