Microscopic growth of pyridinium oxime based amphipathic on graphite: Effect of relative position of substituents

Amphipathic molecules with surfactant like properties have several applications ranging from healthcare to the chemical industry. Their ability to form thin films on surfaces with ordered and controllable patterns determines their applicability. Here, we report two pyridinium oxime‐based surfactants, which possess similar aggregation properties in solution, but exhibit substantially different assembly on highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) surface. The two compounds are regioisomers with the oxime unit placed either in meta or para position of the pyridinium ring. While the para isomer assembled to anisotropic one‐dimensional (1D) islands and long rod‐like structures, the meta isomer formed two‐dimensional (2D) islands on the HOPG surface. This difference is rationalized through molecular level force‐field calculations that show anisotropy in the growth of the para isomer resulting from an effective overlap of the alkyl chains and oxime groups, which is distinctly not feasible in the assembly of the meta isomer. The assembly of these compounds is compared with another oxime‐containing compound of similar structure, but without the charged pyridinium unit. The charged unit seems to be crucial for the preferential formation of multilayer islands even at low coverage.