Lattice-Directed Construction of Metal–Organic Molecular Wires of Pentacene on the Au(110) Surface

The construction of metal–organic molecular wires is important for the design of specific functional devices but has been a great challenge for experimental technology. Here we report the formation of one-dimensional metal–organic structures by direct deposition of pentacene molecules on the Au(110) surface with subsequent thermal annealing. These metal–organic molecular wires were systematically explored by scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and density functional theory calculations. At submonolayer coverage, during annealing at ∼470 K, the adsorbed molecules induce both Au(110)-(1 × 3) surface reconstruction, where two atomic rows are missing every three rows on the Au(110) surface, with the end-to-end pentacene configuration and Au(110)-(1 × 6) surface reconstruction, where five rows are missing every six rows on the surface, with the side-by-side configuration. Further annealing at ∼520 K results in Au-adatom-coordinated metal–organic molecular wires with a new side-by-side configuration of pentacene molecules on the Au(110)-(1 × 6) surface. The Au adatoms linking neighboring pentacene molecules, indicated by bright features in the STM image, were strongly evidenced by the STM simulations. Therefore, metal–organic molecular wires of pentacene on Au(110) were achieved through coordination bonds between native Au atoms and the −CH– groups of pentacene molecules.