Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2020

DOI

10.1038/s41557-020-0454-z

Publication Title

Nature Chemistry

Volume

12

Issue

5

Pages

468-474

Abstract

For the past three decades, the coordination-driven self-assembly of three-dimensional structures has undergone rapid progress; however, parallel efforts to create large discrete two-dimensional architectures—as opposed to polymers—have met with limited success. The synthesis of metallo-supramolecular systems with well-defined shapes and sizes in the range of 10–100 nm remains challenging. Here we report the construction of a series of giant supramolecular hexagonal grids, with diameters on the order of 20 nm and molecular weights greater than 65 kDa, through a combination of intra- and intermolecular metal-mediated self-assembly steps. The hexagonal intermediates and the resulting self-assembled grid architectures were imaged at submolecular resolution by scanning tunnelling microscopy. Characterization (including by scanning tunnelling spectroscopy) enabled the unambiguous atomic-scale determination of fourteen hexagonal grid isomers.

Rights

© 2020 Springer Nature Limited.

This is a U.S. government work and not under copyright protection in the U.S.; foreign copyright protection may apply 2020.

Comments

An author correction was published on 14 May 2020. It is available at: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41557-020-0486-4

Original Publication Citation

Zhang, Z., Li, Y., Song, B., Zhang, Y., Jiang, X., Wang, M., Tumbleson, R., Liu, C., Wang, P., Hao, X. Q., Rojas, T., Ngo, A. T., Sessler, J. L., Newkome, G. R., Hla, S. W., & Li, X. (2020). Intra- and intermolecular self-assembly of a 20-nm-wide supramolecular hexagonal grid. Nature Chemistry, 12(5), 468-474. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41557-020-0454-z

ORCID

0000-0002-7431-5262 (Zhang)

Additional Files
Zhang-2020-Intra-andIntermolecularSelfAssemblyOCRed.pdf (3185 kB)
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