Allen, Alexander and Abdur Rashid, Mohammad and Rahe, Philipp and Jarvis, Samuel P. and O'Shea, James N. and Dunn, Janette L. and Moriarty, Philip (2023) Self-assembly and tiling of a prochiral hydrogen-bonded network:bi-isonicotinic acid on coinage metal surfaces. Molecular Physics, 121 (7-8). ISSN 0026-8976
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
Submolecular resolution scanning tunnelling microscopy and qPlus atomic force microscopy reveal that, close to thermal equilibrium, bi-isonicotinic acid (4,4'-COOH-2,2'-bpy) assembles into extended molecular rows on both Au(111) and Ag(100) surfaces, driven primarily by the formation of OH··· N hydrogen bonds. Both the intermolecular separation and inter-row spacing for Au(111) and Ag(100) are identical within experimental uncertainty, highlighting that the assembly of bi-isonicotinic acid networks on both metal surfaces is predominantly driven by intermolecular hydrogen-bonding and that the potential energy variation due to the substrate has relatively little influence. Nonetheless, the surface plays a key role in molecular organisation: symmetry-breaking induces prochiral behaviour, which drives the molecular enantiomers to form a racemic mixture of rows of different handedness. We adapt a tiling model previously introduced to model the formation of 2D networks of tetracarboxylic derivatives [Blunt et al. Science322, 1077 (2008)] to the bi-isonicotinic acid system, providing key insights into the growth kinetics and attaining good agreement with the molecular morphologies observed in experiment.