“…The most well-studied systems involve alkanethiols grown on Au surfaces [8,9,78,79,104,117,122], although sulphur also shows a strong affinity towards the other noble/ coinage metals, including Ag [9], Pt, Cu, Hg and Pd. Au is most often chosen due to its inertness and resilience to oxidation-so we shall start by discussing this system.…”