On-surface synthesis has attracted great attention in recent years due to its promising potential for creating functional structures on surfaces. Nevertheless, about on surface coordination chemistry, there is not too much examples of on surface synthesis of metallic complexes starting from precursors being coordination complexes. To our knowledge, the only examples belong to Wiesendanger group with the Co-Salophen based molecular building blocks. Here, we present the results obtained by on-surface-synthesis of coordination complexes with brominated Cu-bisdibenzoylmethanato based molecular building blocks on Au(111) reconstructed surface. The complex was functionalized by 4 bromine atoms in para-position. Low temperature Scanning tunneling microscopy (LT-STM) reveals that the complexes self-assemble into halogen-bonded long range molecular structures when deposited at room temperature and then form dimers, trimers and oligomers when deposited at 150°C by Ullman coupling.
Fig. 1 : STM image of the complex-1 on Au(111) after deposition on a hot surface between 150°C and 120°C (100x100 nm2, imaging conditions :-0.5V, 50 pA). (A) Monomer, (B) Dimer, (C) Trimer, (D) longer oligomer, (E) halogen bonded self-assembly and (F) zigzag chains. Credit : V. Langlais, CEMES-CNRS.
References
Self-Assembly and On-Surface Synthesis of copper b-diketonato complexes on Au(111)-reconstructed surface. V. Langlais, M. Piantek, C. Viala, and J. Bonvoisin (in preparation)