Metal-organic Coordination Induced Self-assembled Structures Of 4’-([2,2’:6’,2"-Terpyridin]-4’-Yl)-[1,1’-Phenyl]-4-Carboxylic Acid Molecules On Ag(Ⅲ)

The self-assembled su pramolecular structures o f4’-([2,2’:6’,2’’-terpyridin]-4’-yl)-[1,1’-phenyl]-4-carboxylic acid molecules on Ag(111) surface have been formed by introducing metal atoms and studied by scanning tunneling microscopy. After the annealing treatment, the as-deposited monolayer of 4’-([2,2’:6’,2’’-terpyridin]-4’-yl)-[1,1’-phenyl]-4-carboxylic acid molecules is transferred into a mixture of four kinds of well-ordered structures due to the competition between dipole interaction, hydrogen bonding and var der Waals interaction.Introduced Cu atoms drive an ordered monolayer into a self-assembled supramolecular structure with bright spots. Allochthonous Ag atoms transfer the monolayer to a windmill shape self-assembled supramolecular structure with chirality. Although the Cu and Ag are in the same group in the element periodicity, a Cu atom connects two COOH groups and an Ag atom trends to bind to three COOH groups during the formation of metal-organic bonding within both induced structures. Our findings suggest that the self-assembled structures formed by metal-organic coordination bonding can be controlled by choosing the number of metal-organic coordination bonds, which can be helpful to design metal-organic molecular architectures comprising functional building blocks.