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A subsequent combination of OSWD self-assembly with nanomanipulation in terms of extractions of molecules from weak interconnected supramolecular networks enables to store information into monolayers.
Usually, no modifications can be observed after nanomanipulations of monolayers at the solid/liquid interface. This can be explained by an immediate refill of gaps with molecules from the liquid or solution, resulting in an instant healing of supramolecular structures.
In contrast, generated gaps within van-der-Waals assembled monolayers grown by OSWD are by far more stable. The high stability can be explained by the precondition for OSWD - a direct, physical contact between organic nanocrystals and the substrate. The achieved gaps, which are usually below 4 nm in width, are too small to incorporate suspended nanocrystals as the average size of primary particles of commercially available pigment / semiconductor compounds is about 50-100 nm. Thus, the nanocrystals cannot achieve a direct contact with the substrate surface exposed by the gap. This prevents a resupply of molecules to fill up the gaps.
Our results indicate that this
approach may in principal open up the way for
devices offering a data storage density in the
regime of 1 Tbit/square inch and, at the same
time, can both be fabricated and written with a
very low preparational effort completely under
ambient conditions.