  While monolayer area fraction versus time ($A_{n}-t$) curves obtained from
surface pressure-area ($\pi-A$) isotherms for desorption-dominated (DD)
processes in Langmuir monolayers of fatty acids represent continuous loss,
those from Brewster Angle Microscopy (BAM) also show a 2D coalescence. For
nucleation-dominated (ND) processes both techniques suggest competing
processes, with BAM showing 2D coalescence alongside multilayer formation.
$\pi$ enhances both DD and ND with a lower cut-off for ND, while temperature
has a lower cut-off for DD but negligible effect on ND. Hydrocarbon chain
length has the strongest effect, causing a cross-over from DD to ND dynamics.
Imaging Ellipsometry (IE) of horizontally transferred films onto Si(100) shows
Stranski-Krastanov (SK) like growth for ND process in arachidic acid monolayer
resulting in succesive stages of monolayer, trilayer, multilayer islands,
ridges from lateral island-coalescence and shallow wavelike structures from
ridge-coalescence on the film surface. These studies show that lipophilic
attraction between hydrocarbon chains is the driving force at all stages of
long term monolayer dynamics.
