Experimental Realization of One-Dimensional Metal-Inorganic Chain: Gold–Phosphorus Chain

Porous metal-organic frameworks have attracted tremendous research interest, because of the presence of tunable porous structures and site-isolated catalytic units. However, bottom-up on-surface synthesis of their inorganic counterparts, metal-inorganic frameworks (MIFs), is rarely demonstrated. Here, we report a facile epitaxial growth of one-dimensional (1D) porous metal-inorganic chains, gold–phosphorus chains (AuP chains), in which phosphorus magic clusters P₄ are interconnected by Au atoms extracted from the underlying Au(110) surface. The atomic structure has been precisely revealed through the combination of low-temperature scanning tunneling microscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and density functional theory calculations. The growth process involves the formation of phosphorus dimers sitting at the bridge sites of the top rows of Au(110) (2 × 1) reconstructed surface at low coverage, followed by the etching of the phosphorus dimers and the transformation to 1D AuP chains with prolonged phosphorus deposition. Our findings provide a facile method for on-surface synthesis of 1D MIFs and pave the way for their potential applications in the future.