English

Non-equilibrium Roughness Evolution of Small Molecule Mixed Films Reflecting Equilibrium Phase Behavior

Applied Physics 2021-03-09 v1 Computational Physics

Abstract

Understanding non-equilibrium phenomena, such as growth, and connecting them to equilibrium phase behavior is a major challenge, in particular for complex multicomponent materials. We use X-ray reflectivity to determine the surface roughness of binary mixtures of several prototypical organic compounds. By analyzing the roughness as a function of composition, we find a systematic behavior depending on the bulk phase behavior in terms of intermixing, co-crystallization or phase separation. Supported by kinetic Monte Carlo simulations, we provide evidence that the growth behavior can be rationalized by a lowered step edge barrier in the mixed films which is induced by reduced in-plane crystallinity.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2103.04754,
  title  = {Non-equilibrium Roughness Evolution of Small Molecule Mixed Films Reflecting Equilibrium Phase Behavior},
  author = {Alexander Hinderhofer and Jan Hagenlocher and Alexander Gerlach and Joachim Krug and Martin Oettel and Frank Schreiber},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2103.04754},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

10 pages, 9 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T23:52:32.517Z