Growth and Structural Study of Cadmium Arachidate Multilayers Deposited by LB Technique

Abstract

Langmuir–Blodgett (LB) multilayer films of cadmium arachidate acid (CdAA) have been studied by X-ray diffraction and X-ray reflectivity techniques, which reveal uniform ordered packing of CdAA molecules with a small tilt angle of long alkyl chain equal to 6.8º. Electron density profiles reveal that the coverage of films remains almost constant with increase in bilayer thickness, which indicates very little presence of pinhole defects. FTIR studies confirm orthorhombic packing in CdAA LB films and the formation of unidentate bridging metal-carboxylate coordination type headgroups consistent with one cadmium metal ion between two carboxylic (COO) groups in each headgroup.

Keywords:

• CdAA LB film
• monolayer
• uniform stacking
• tilt angle

Acknowledgements

We gratefully thank Dr. Mukul Gupta for his support in taking XRD measurements and Dr. V. R. Reddy for providing XRR facility. We acknowledge UGC-DAE CSR, Indore for giving opportunity to carry out characterization of the samples under the CRS project.

Additional information

Funding

Dhrubojyoti Roy and P. S. Gupta thank UGC for financial support for carrying out the research work.