Predicting 2D Crystal Packing in Thin Films of Small Molecule Organic Materials

The large variety of structural morphologies realized in organic semiconductors is a big challenge for the microscopic modeling of such systems. A global computational solution is still out of reach due to prevalent molecular flexibility. However, the specific case of crystalline thin films that exhibit surface alignment of molecular pi-systems for optoelectronic applications of high technological relevance, seems to be a simpler task. This study proposes an approach for the structure prediction of two-dimensional (2D) molecular layers as precursors for the three-dimensional (3D) structure of deposited crystalline thin films. Based on grid search sampling for the layer's degrees of freedom, it requires only a small number of trial structures to find complex packing motifs of layered molecular materials. It facilitates parallel screening among multiple molecular conformers, which is usually very difficult and expensive, using the latest 3D-based prediction methods. The study researches theoretically and experimentally a set of known and newly crystallized compounds of evaporable flexible molecules with interesting optoelectronic properties, predicts their packing in 2D layers, and compares them with experimentally resolved crystal structures, obtaining very good agreement in the packing of these molecules within layers. The computational costs are estimated to be several orders of magnitude lower than with 3D methods.