Profile Structures of Macromolecular Monolayers on Solid Substrates By X-Ray Interferometry/Holography

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Abstract
Previous work has recently employed x-ray interferometry for the unique determination of the profile structures of ultrathin Langmuir-Blodgett multilayer films of Cd-arachidate and of tethered protein monolayers on the surface of Ge/Si multilayer substrates [1, 2]. These studies utilized the inorganic substrate as the reference structure for the interferometrie phasing of the meridional x-ray diffraction I (Qxy=0A-1, QZ) from the inorganic-organic composite structure. The substrates, fabricated by magnetron sputtering, contained only broad profile features (≥20 A), thereby limiting the spatial resolution of the organic profile structures so-determined. Molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) permits the fabrication of the multilayer reference structure with profile features as narrow as a single atomic monolayer, thereby providing delta-function-like features in the reference structure. The reference structure can then be tailored such that the autocorrelation function of the inorganic-organic composite profile structure [obtained by a Fourier transform of its meridional diffraction I (Qxy=0A-1, Qz) data without phase information] contains only the organic profile structure itself over a particular range of the profile coordinate z. This approach for uniquely determining the unknown profile structure of the organic overlayer is x-ray holography by analogy to simple off-axis holography with much longer wavelength radiation. We have initially utilized MBE fabricated Ge/Si multilayer substrates of the type N(Ge2Si30), e.g., for N=2 or 3 superlattice unit cells, each containing two Ge monolayers and thirty Si monolayers, to thereby determine the profile structures of four different organic overlayers, namely a) self-assembled alkylsiloxane monolayers, b) Langmuir-Blodgett cadmium alkylcarboxylate monolayers, c) a Langmuir-Blodgett Cd-arachidate head-to-head bilayer deposited on a)-above and, d) a covalently tethered protein monolayer.