Amorphous dihalonaphthalenes that are prepared by vacuum deposition onto a cold Al2O3 surface form electronically excited dimers when optically pumped, and their emission is characteristically red-shifted, broad and featureless compared to the monomeric fluorescence. If the surface is heated, the adlayer undergoes a disorder-to-order transition at a temperature characteristic of the molecule. Since pure crystalline dihalonaphthalenes typically fluoresce and do not exhibit excimeric features, the transition was studied by taking advantage of the changes in the spectral characteristics of the adlayer. These included transmittance, and emission from fluorescence and excimer. The combination of these methods allowed a close look at the surface dynamics of molecules on the surface of Al2O3 as the adlayer was heated from the deposition temperature to desorption. If a bilayer is formed by depositing water onto the surface with the organic adlayer on top, water, with its lower desorption energy, can be made to percolate into the organic layer. The optical probes indicate that the water clearly associates with the organic molecules while the excess water desorbs. By varying the coverage of either the water or the dihalonaphthalene, the stoichiometric composition of the cluster can be determined and are reported here. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.