Fig. 3
Thermodynamical epitaxial growth of 2D p-MSB crystals. a Schematic diagrams of a p-MSB single crystal with indexed facets viewing along the c axes and at about 45° angle with respect to the c direction. b Molecular arrangement and c X-ray diffraction (XRD) pattern of the p-MSB crystal. The calculated surface-free energy of each crystal facet is shown in b. d Plots of average crystal size and average thickness with respect to the growth temperature (all crystal sizes are quantified using the diagonal length of the crystals). e–i Optical images of p-MSB crystals grown at different temperatures from 298 K to 373 K. j, k Growth mechanism of two different growth modes. The ratio of the lateral growth rate to the vertical growth rate varies with temperatures. High-energy facet and low-energy facet are indicated by red and blue dashed lines, respectively. The thermodynamically controlled 2D growth mode can reach a surface energy minimum. The scale bars in e–i are 200 μm. The error bars in d represent the standard error of the mean (s.e.m.) of the average size or the average thickness of the crystal measured from the optical or AFM images
