Understanding and controlling the weakly interacting interface in perylene/Ag(110)

The weakly interacting interface, perylene on Ag(110), has been systematically investigated in detail with molecular-beam epitaxy and low-energy-electron diffraction (LEED), low-temperature-scanning-tunneling microscopy (STM), and first-principles calculations. The overall process of perylene monolayer growth has been clearly discussed by LEED and STM. The monolayer structure is sensitive to growth conditions because perylene has a poor self-assembly ability on Ag(110). However, we achieved the control of the formation of the uniform perylene monolayer composed of only one superstructure. The locally distributed metastable structures produced on certain growth conditions were also discussed.