CaSTL Seminar with Oliver L.A. Monti

Molecular interfaces play a dominant role in much of Chemistry, and are of vital importance in diverse applications such as sensing, catalysis and electron transfer. Yet the mere fact of coupling two fundamentally different materials, e.g. a molecular solid with an inorganic substrate, makes interfaces typically difficult to understand, and robust means to tailor electronic structure and dynamics at interfaces are still missing. In the context of organic semiconductors, considerable progress has been made for physisorptive, weakly interacting systems, as well as in a few select more strongly coupled instances. For the latter, general approaches are however still missing. Here, I will show how both electronic structure and magnetic texture can be tailored and understood by judicious choice of the organic semiconductor. I will discuss several case studies of chemisorption that use designer molecule-surface interactions at organic-metal and hybrid organic-inorganic semiconductor interfaces to control electronic interactions and spin texture. This opens new pathways towards an improved understanding of organic semiconductor interfaces even in strongly interacting cases. Finally, I will show how advanced x-ray spectroscopies enable us to understand carrier dynamics on extremely fast time-scales, highlighted in the context of carrier flow across a weakly coupled interface.