An STM Investigation on a Metal Induced Structural Evolution of an m-Substituted Bipyridine Derivative on Highly Oriented Pyrolytic Graphite

Abstract

Due to an increasing demand for miniaturized electronics, on-surface molecular assembly has progressed rapidly for its advantage of fabricating highly organized patterns at nanoscale. In this regard, on-surface metal-organic architectures of bipyridine derivates have been invoked owing to moderate strength and flexible direction of metal-ligand interaction. Despite intensive researches on self-assembled monolayers of p-substituted bipyridine derivates and their metal complexes, few reports have addressed the structural evolution of m-substituted ones. In this paper, a 4,4'-dinonyl-2,2'-bipyridine with two substitutional alkyl chains at m-positions was employed as a ligand for construction of metallosupramolecular architectures with zinc and copper centers via metal coordination, respectively. A microscopic observation on metal directed structural transformations of 4,4'-dinonyl-2,2'-bipyridine arrays, together with merits from previous related researches, reveals more understanding on the rational design of on-surface bipyridine derivates based metal-organic architectures.