Controlling the stereospecific bonding motif of Au-thiolate links and assessment of their catalytic properties

Organosulfur compounds at the interface of noble metals have long been proved to be extremely versatile systems. In this work we explore the formation of gold-thiolate-based organometallic structures from 1,4-bis(4-mercaptophenyl) benzene (BMB) deposited onto Au(111) surface. By controlling the on-surface reaction conditions we can selectively choose the resulting structures to be either arrays of cyclic Au3BMB3 units or linearly stacked nanowires, although the former turn out to be the thermodynamically favored products[1]. Most interestingly, co-deposition of alkyne-functionalized pyrene derivatives on this system reveals the catalytic activity of the R-S-Au-S-R vertices on alkyne coupling reactions.

Reference:
[1] L. Colazzo, M. S. G. Mohammed, A. Gallardo, Z. M. Abd El-Fattah, J. A. Pomposo, P. Jelínek and D. G. de Oteyza, Nanoscale 2019, DOI: 10.1039/c9nr04383g