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Abstract

Three different polyimide monolayers prepared on Au{111} using the Langmuir-Blodgett method have been studied with the scanning tunnelling microscope (STM) in air. A typical image from such a layer shows three rotational domains of a striped structure, as observed in previous measurements. The stripes, which are oriented in the 〈211〉 directions, have an average separation of 1.75 nm. This apparent microtopography is, however, largely independent of the preparation and of the nature of the polymer backbone, which may indicate that the image is related to a modification of the gold substrate.