Investigation of Local Hydration Structures of Alkanethiol Self-Assembled Monolayers with Different Molecular Structures by FM-AFM

Hydration structures play crucial roles in a wide variety of chemical and biological phenomena. However, the key factors that determine a hydration structure remain an open question. Most recent studies have focused on the electrostatic interactions between the surface charges and dipoles of water molecules, which are determined by the atomic/ionic species of the outermost solid surface, as the dominating factor. The number of studies on the correlation between the hydration structure and the atomic-scale surface corrugation has been limited. In this study, we investigated the hydration structures of alkanethiol self-assembled monolayers terminated with a hydroxyl group using frequency-modulated atomic force microscopy. We observed two molecular structures, namely, the (root 3 x root 3)R30 degrees structure and the c(4 x 2) superlattice structure, and found that their hydration structures are different mainly because of the slight differences in their molecular arrangements. This result suggests that a slight difference in the molecular/atomic arrangements as well as the atomic/ionic species in the outermost solid surface strongly influences the local hydration structures.