Bottom-Up Self-Assembled Supramolecular Structures Built by STM at the Solid/Liquid Interface

Abstract

One of the lines of research on organic devices is focused on their miniaturization to obtain denser and faster electronic circuits. The challenge is to build devices adding atom by atom or molecule by molecule until the desired structures are achieved. To do this job, techniques able to see and manipulate matter at this scale are needed. Scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) has been the selected technique by scientists to develop smart and functional unimolecular devices. This review article compiles the latest developments in this field giving examples of supramolecular systems monitored and fabricated at the molecular scale by bottom-up approaches using STM at the solid/liquid interface.

Self-Assembly Properties of Solution Processable, Electroactive Alkoxy, and Alkylthienylene Derivatives of Fused Benzoacridines: A Scanning Tunneling Microscopy Study

“…The effect of such self-assembly is hard to predict, especially in the case of organic molecules of complex molecular and electronic structures. Scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) is a very well suited scientific tool for this kind of investigation and has been frequently used to study various families of organic semiconductors (see, for example, representative review articles − ). Recently, we have applied this technique to elucidate the self-organization of several semiconductors of the donor–acceptor–donor type, such as arylamine-substituted naphthalene, oligothiophene-substituted tetrazine, thiadiazole, − tetraalkoxy-substituted dinaphthophenazine, and oligothiophene-substituted diketopyrrolopyrrole .…”

Graphene Biosensors—A Molecular Approach

“… Illustration of a step-by-step method used to build supramolecular structures with STM at the solid/liquid interface. Reproduced from [ 31 ] with permission from the Creative Common CC BY license. …”

Kinked row-induced chirality driven by molecule–substrate interactions

“…On the one hand, they display similar intermolecular distances and a fan-shaped arrangement of the molecules within the unit cell. They also display specific orientations of the molecules with respect to the crystallographic directions of the substrates leading to a unitcell period of 41.7 Å along the longitudinal direction [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10] on HOPG and of 48.5 Å, a much larger value, along [120] on MoS 2 .…”

“…It is difficult because the relevant interactions, responsible for the induced ordered structures, are all of the same order of magnitude, moreover of value often not precisely known. Despite such complexity, the scientific interest towards 2D supra-molecular structures remains very high 1 since the crystalline structures, induced on crystalline substrates, can provide a number of potential applications 2 . To recall only a few, 2D molecular structures could be used as mother-templates for the stabilization of 3D molecular films that can be chiral [3][4][5][6] .…”