Grazing-incidence X-ray diffraction study of rubrene epitaxial thin films

The growth of organic semiconductors as thin films with good and controlled electrical performances is nowadays one of the main tasks in the field of organic semiconductor-based electronic devices. In particular it is often required to grow highly crystalline and precisely oriented thin films. Here, thanks to grazing-incidence X-ray diffraction measurements carried out at the ELETTRA synchrotron facility, it is shown that rubrene thin films deposited by organic molecular beam epitaxy on the surface of tetracene single crystals have the structure of the known orthorhombic polymorph, with the (2 0 0) plane parallel to the substrate surface. Moreover, the exact epitaxial relationship between the film and the substrate crystalline structures is determined, demonstrating the presence of a unique in-plane orientation of the overlayer.