On-surface chemistry is a potential strategy focused on obtaining and developing novel nanomaterials of different dimensionalities with atomic precision. The growth mechanism is based on a bottom-up approach where molecular building blocks are evaporated onto a surface. Therefore, choosing the appropriate surface and precursor we are able to build and…
New nanoarchitectures can be built from polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) by exploiting the catalytic properties of some metal surfaces. Actually, this bottom-up approach allows the formation of nanostructures with different dimensionality from the same precursor as a consequence of the diffusion of the PAH on the surface. Thus, by selecting…
Recently, we have published a new work in a special issue of the Surface Science journal in Honour of Richard Lambert. “Adsorption and coupling of 4-aminophenol on Pt(111) surfaces” Surf. Sci. 646 (2016) 5-12 by G. Otero-Irurueta, J.I. Martínez, R.A. Bueno, F.J. Palomares, H.J. Salavagione, M.K. Singh, J. Méndez, G.J.…
One of the most extended approaches in order to growth metal-organic nanostructures on surfaces consists in recombine small organic molecules with a carefully controlled quantity of metallic atoms on a surface. As an example, our group followed this strategy in previous works for obtaining a rich variety of nanostructures by…
The use of appropriately functionalized molecular building blocks to form novel nano-architectures with tailored structure and electronic properties has recently been brought under the spotlight. Recently, the ESISNA group has developed an effective way of exploiting on-surface chemistry to grow different nanostructures in sequential steps from the same molecular precursor. We have used different activation temperatures to…
Despite their abundance and ubiquity in space, the origin of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) is still a mystery for astronomers. Gas phase chemistry models, this is, simple collisions between C atoms and C-containing molecules, and soot formation mechanisms can not easily account for the observed amount of PAHs, as they…
Our research group has shown the catalytic properties of the TiO2(110)-(1×1) surface towards dehydrogenation of large organic molecules. We have deposited C60H30 molecules on this surface and we have proven that high temperature annealing leads to partial cyclodehydrogenation, which allows the use of the activated PAH’s as building blocks for larger…
The bottom-up approach aims at forming tailored nanoarchitectures by manipulating organic molecules at atomic level and it is one of the most effective strategies used in nanotechnology. Catalytic surfaces are often used to prompt a particular reaction as they are very successful in modifying a particular molecule in selected ways.…
The possibility to select molecules with different shapes is one of the most intriguing issues of organic electronics, since it lets us envisage the exploitation of the anisotropy parameter for the design of hybrid archetypal devices. For this reason, we have studied the growth of two organic molecules, whose shape…
A tutorial Chemical Society Review On-surface synthesis can be regarded as an efficient means to build new molecular species by using bottom-up strategies. Recently, a collection of different reactions leading to large tailor-made organic molecules on single-crystal metal surfaces has been reported. The fundamental mechanisms controlling these reactions can be…