Supramolecular Chemistry at the Liquid/Solid Interface a Scanning Tunneling Microscopy Approach

With scanning tunneling microscopy (STM), the intramolecular conformational and intermolecular ordering aspects have been investigated of a variety of organic molecules physisorbed at the liquid-solid interface. By balancing the interplay between intramolecular and intermolecular interactions (hydrogen bonding), leading to control of the molecular conformation, foldamers were created which order into well-defined two-dimensional crystals. The nature of the hydrogen bonding groups in conjugated oligomers leads to the formation of infinite stacks and cyclic multimers, expressing the chiral nature of the molecules.