Scanning tunneling microscopy of coexisting 2D crystalline and 1D stacking-disordered phases at the chiral-liquid-crystal–graphite interface

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Abstract
Scanning tunneling microscopy study of monolayers of the chiral-liquid-crystal-forming molecule W7 shows the coexistence of two phases having unit cells of opposite chiral symmetry, one a 2D crystalline phase and the other a 1D stacking-disorder phase exhibiting the kind of structural ambivalence characteristic of bulk liquid crystals. The interrow interactions in the stacking-disorder phase can be described using a one-dimensional three-state Potts model with extended interrow interactions.