Controlled Construction of an Exquisite Three-Component Co-assembly Supramolecular Structure at the Liquid-Solid Interface

Siqi Zhang; Linxiu Cheng; Chen Chen; Jianqiao Li; Xiaokang Li; Min Zhang; Faliang Cheng; Xunwen Xiao; Ke Deng; Qingdao Zeng

doi:10.1021/acs.langmuir.0c03387

Controlled Construction of an Exquisite Three-Component Co-assembly Supramolecular Structure at the Liquid-Solid Interface

Langmuir. 2021 Feb 16;37(6):2153-2160. doi: 10.1021/acs.langmuir.0c03387. Epub 2021 Feb 2.

Authors

Siqi Zhang¹, Linxiu Cheng¹, Chen Chen¹, Jianqiao Li¹, Xiaokang Li¹, Min Zhang², Faliang Cheng², Xunwen Xiao³, Ke Deng¹, Qingdao Zeng^{1

4}

Affiliations

¹ CAS Key Laboratory of Standardization and Measurement for Nanotechnology, CAS Center for Excellence in Nanoscience, National Center for Nanoscience and Technology (NCNST), Beijing 100190, P. R. China.
² Guangdong Engineering and Technology Research Center for Advanced Nanomaterials, School of Environment and Civil Engineering, Dongguan University of Technology, Dongguan 523808, P. R. China.
³ School of Materials and Chemical Engineering, Ningbo University of Technology, Ningbo 315211, P. R. China.
⁴ Center of Materials Science and Optoelectonics Engineering, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, P. R. China.

PMID: 33527825
DOI: 10.1021/acs.langmuir.0c03387

Abstract

A three-component supramolecular co-assembly structure formed at the liquid-solid interface by employing a shape-persistent π-conjugated macrocycle (1_6mer) and two guest molecules (COR and C₆₀) is demonstrated. Scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) observations revealed that 1_6mer can serve as a versatile host molecule that can co-assemble with both COR and C₆₀ guest molecules to form stable two-component structures, where the COR guest molecule filled in the gap between the side chains of adjacent 1_6mer molecules, and the C₆₀ guest molecule entered the inner cavity of 1_6mer. It was found that the adding sequence of COR and C₆₀ guest molecules is crucial to the resulting co-adsorption structure in the three-component system. To obtain the intriguing 1_6mer-COR-C₆₀ three-component co-assembly structure, the 1_6mer and COR two-component co-assembly structure should first be constructed on a HOPG surface, followed by addition of C₆₀. Based on the analysis of the STM results and the density functional theory (DFT) calculations, the formation mechanism of the assembled structures was revealed.