In areas where fast charge transport is a desired property, organic electronics currently relies on vapor deposited materials with few grain boundaries and high molecular order. Immense research efforts are made to understand the formation of single crystalline organic materials from solution processed films. We show that from dewetted cyanine dye films, single crystals can be grown by solvent vapor annealing. The crystals can be aligned along an energy pattern on the substrate.

Figure: Single crystals grow from dewetted film morphologies. The single crystals align along stripes of self-assembled monolayers. Reprinted with permission from ACS Nano 2013, 7, 5506. Copyright 2013 American Chemical Society.

Reference:
J.-N. Tisserant et al., Growth and Alignment of Thin Film Organic Single Crystals from Dewetting Patterns, ACS Nano 2013, 7, 5506-5513.

Funding:

SNF: Spacial and Morphological Control of Cyanine Dye Crystals

http://p3.snf.ch/project-152909

SNF: Structured Templates for Dye Aggregation and Crystallization for Applications in Photovoltaics and Photonics

http://p3.snf.ch/project-149127