0000000000336612
AUTHOR
Antje Richter
Reversible and Efficient Light-Induced Molecular Switching on an Insulator Surface
Prototypical molecular switches such as azobenzenes exhibit two states, i.e., trans and cis, with different characteristic physical properties. In recent years various derivatives were investigated on metallic surfaces. However, bulk insulators as supporting substrate reveal important advantages since they allow electronic decoupling from the environment, which is key to control the switching properties. Here, we report on the light-induced isomerization of an azobenzene derivative on a bulk insulator surface, in this case calcite (101̅4), studied by atomic force microscopy with submolecular resolution. Surprisingly, cis isomers appear on the surface already directly after preparation, indi…
Diacetylene polymerization on a bulk insulator surface
| openaire: EC/FP7/610446/EU//PAMS Molecular electronics has great potential to surpass known limitations in conventional silicon-based technologies. The development of molecular electronics devices requires reliable strategies for connecting functional molecules by wire-like structures. To this end, diacetylene polymerization has been discussed as a very promising approach for contacting single molecules with a conductive polymer chain. A major challenge for future device fabrication is transferring this method to bulk insulator surfaces, which are mandatory to decouple the electronic structure of the functional molecules from the support surface. Here, we provide experimental evidence for…
On-surface synthesis on a bulk insulator surface
On-surface synthesis has rapidly emerged as a most promising approach to prepare functional molecular structures directly on a support surface. Compared to solution synthesis, performing chemical reactions on a surface offers several exciting new options: due to the absence of a solvent, reactions can be envisioned that are otherwise not feasible due to the insolubility of the reaction product. Perhaps even more important, the confinement to a two-dimensional surface might enable reaction pathways that are not accessible otherwise. Consequently, on-surface synthesis has attracted great attention in the last decade, with an impressive number of classical reactions transferred to a surface as…
Homocoupling of terminal alkynes on calcite (10.4)
Abstract On-surface synthesis has been identified as highly versatile strategy to prepare molecular structures on surfaces with single-atom precision. Inspired by the classical Glaser coupling, homocoupling of terminal alkynes has attracted great attention for on-surface synthesis. This coupling is known for providing a rigid and linear linkage, which is highly interesting for the synthesis of molecular wires. For molecular wire formation, non-conductive substrates are needed for electronic decoupling. So far, however, coupling of terminal alkynes has not been performed on a bulk insulator surface. Here, we present an atomic force microscopy study, indicating that 4,4″-diethynyl-[1,1′:4′,1″…
Generic nature of long-range repulsion mechanism on a bulk insulator?
Dynamic atomic force microscopy measurements are reported that provide evidence for the presence of long-range repulsion in molecular self-assembly on a bulk insulator surface. We present the structures formed from four different benzoic acid derivatives on the (10.4) cleavage plane of calcite kept in ultra-high vacuum. These molecules have in common that they self-assemble into molecular stripes when deposited onto the surface held at room temperature. For all molecules tested, a detailed analysis of the stripe-to-stripe distance distribution reveals a clear deviation from what would be expected for randomly placed, non-interacting stripes (i.e., geometric distribution). When excluding kin…