Establishment of an Ordered Array of Physisorbed Ethanol Molecules on Lithium Fluoride as Evidenced by the Diffraction of Helium Atoms

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Abstract
A (001) surface of lithium fluoride was deliberately contaminated by several organic molecules at temperatures around 150°K. The molecules studied were; CCl4, C6H6, CH3OH, C2H5OH, and H2O. The adsorption mechanism involved completely reversible physisorption and in the case of C2H5OH molecules, reorientation occurred on the surface to form and ordered array, for a given range of surface temperatures. For temperatures below this range, an ordered array was not formed. The former case gave well-defined diffraction peaks in the scattering pattern of helium atoms, whilst in the latter case no evidence of diffraction was observed.