Effect of temperature on friction observed between a Si₃N₄ tip and a dodecanethiol self-assembled monolayer on Au(111)

Mitsuhiro Fujita and Masamichi Fujihira

Department of Biomolecular Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology,
4259 Nagatsuta, Midori-ku, Yokohama 226-8501, Japan

Recent computational studies [1, 2] predicted that friction of ordered organic monolayer has characteristic dependence on temperature, where the maximum friction was observed around rotator transition point of the monolayer. This remained to be confirmed experimentally. Using a frictional force microscope (FFM) combined with a temperature regulation module, we attempted to investigate such dependence on temperature (130 K - room temperature) on a self-assembled monolayer of dodecanethiol prepared on Au (111). The observed friction showed strong dependence on temperature and good agreement with the prediction by the computational studies.

1. J. N. Glosli and G. M. McClelland, Phys. Rev. Lett. 70 (1993) 1960.
2. T. Ohzono and M. Fujihira, Phys. Rev. B 62 (2000) 17055.