Temperature-dependent absorption of aromatic molecules on silicon

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Abstract
We found that the exposure of 85-K cleaved Si substrates to benzene or pyridine vapors produces weakly bound physisorption states rather than the stable chemisorption states obtained by room-temperature exposure. Quite unexpectedly, annealing these states to relatively low temperatures does not simply result in thermal desorption. On the contrary, it results in the conversion of the physisorption states into the stable chemisorption states. This surprising result confirms the unusually high reactivity of aromatic molecules on cleaved silicon, which appears related to the presence of cleavage steps.